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“Open internet exchange movement organizing” is not the name of one unified organization. It describes connected efforts to defend an open, rights-respecting internet, bring coalitions together for policy and public campaigns, and build community-centered connectivity—including internet exchange points (IXPs). These strands can reinforce one another, but they have different participants, goals and measures of progress.
What does open internet movement organizing include?
At its broadest, open-internet organizing brings people and organizations together to influence how the internet is governed, protect digital rights, expand access, or improve how networks connect. The work may happen through public campaigns, policy forums, local community networks or technical infrastructure projects. The phrase should therefore be understood as an umbrella, not as a single global movement with one membership or program.
Two organizations illustrate the range of meanings. The Movement for a Better Internet describes a coalition approach to a shared public-interest vision and policy agenda. The Movement for an Open Web presents a distinct mission. Neither label makes every internet-rights group, grassroots campaign or IXP initiative part of the same organization.
Three overlapping strands—and how they differ
| Strand | Typical participants and priorities | What the work does |
|---|---|---|
| Digital-rights and internet policy | Civil-society organizations, advocates and affected communities; priorities include rights, access to knowledge and policy rules. | Advocacy and engagement in public policy venues, alongside campaigns that bring issues to public attention. |
| Coalition and grassroots campaigns | Organizations and local groups coordinating around a shared issue or public-interest agenda. | Aligns messaging, campaigns, content and events; may also connect community concerns to policy advocacy. |
| Community connectivity and IXPs | Community-network groups, network operators, technical experts and public institutions. | Builds or supports local connectivity, interconnection and the relationships and skills needed to sustain them. |
These strands can overlap—for example, a campaign may argue for policy that supports interconnection—but they are not interchangeable. A policy victory does not itself establish a local network or exchange, and infrastructure deployment alone does not settle questions about rights or public policy.
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How coalitions turn a shared vision into action
The Movement for a Better Internet describes a coalition model: establish a common public-interest vision and policy agenda, convene groups with different expertise, then coordinate advocacy, campaigns, content and events. Its stated organizing partners include the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Creative Commons, Derechos Digitales, Internet Archive, Public Knowledge and Wikimedia Foundation.
Coalition work requires choices about whose priorities shape the agenda and how partners coordinate. A practical way to assess an initiative is to ask:
- Who participates, and who has authority to set priorities?
- How do affected communities influence the goals and decisions?
- Is the main activity policy advocacy, a public campaign, infrastructure implementation, or a combination?
- Where are decisions made, and when can organizers still influence them?
- Does the work operate locally, nationally or across borders?
- How will the group sustain relationships, organizational capacity and technical skills?
These questions help distinguish a coalition’s stated reach from the people who actually influence its decisions.
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Digital-rights advocacy connects campaigns to policy venues
APC’s historical overview traces civil-society networking and internet-rights work through campaigns and policy engagement. Examples include participation connected to the World Summit on the Information Society, the Internet Governance Forum and the UN Human Rights Council, as well as the Take Back the Tech campaign and work addressing online gender-based violence.
APC says partner work contributed to two Human Rights Council resolutions: the recognition, first adopted in 2012, that “the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online,” and recognition in 2018 of online gender-based violence as a rights violation. These milestones show how campaign and civil-society activity can engage formal policy venues; they do not establish that one tactic works equally well for every issue or country.
The UK-based Open Rights Group offers another organizational example. Founded in 2005, according to its Who We Are page, it combines policy campaigns with local groups and partner work. Its undated current page reports five legal victories, active groups in 11 UK towns and cities, and 72 million websites checked by its free Blocked tool. Those are the organization’s own reported figures, not independent audit findings.
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Community connectivity and IXP development are relationship work
An internet exchange point lets networks exchange internet traffic directly. Local exchange can support locally routed traffic, but launching and sustaining an IXP is not just a matter of installing equipment. Participating operators may compete with one another while needing to cooperate on interconnection, so trust, shared expectations and governance matter alongside technical design.
The Internet Society’s IXP policy brief describes the effort as “80 percent social engineering and 20 percent technical engineering.” Treat that as the brief’s memorable characterization, not as a measured statistic. Its recommendations emphasize neutral location and management, stakeholder dialogue, training, and policy conditions that support interconnection.
The Internet Society’s mobilization resources connect this work to community-centered connectivity and sustainable peering. They include community-network guidance, policy strategies, peering explainers, IXP policy material and the Open Fibre Data Standard. These resources address related but different needs: community-network support is not the same task as establishing an IXP, even when both can strengthen local connectivity.
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Recent examples of local organizing
The Internet Society’s Community in Action 2025, published in 2026, describes several efforts illustrating how local relationships, training and infrastructure come together:
- Israel: IL-IX is described as a 400 gigabit-per-second Layer 2 exchange, open to a wider range of organizations for peering than the previous ISP-only exchange. Yoram Hacohen, CEO of the Internet Society Israel Chapter, said: “By enabling more entities to connect directly and exchange traffic locally, the new IXP significantly enhances Israeli network performance.”
- Guinea: A five-day IXP workshop provided training to more than 30 engineers from local ISPs and network operators.
- Niger: The chapter prepared stakeholders through training and information sharing before the launch of the country’s first IXP.
- Zimbabwe and Senegal: Zimbabwe’s chapter organized the country’s first peering forum; Senegal’s chapter partnered with local IXPs to organize a 2025 peering and interconnection forum.
The report provides examples, not a comparative evaluation of which organizing model produces the best outcomes. The IL-IX specification and the workshop and forum details above are reported in the Internet Society’s account of 2025 activity, published in 2026.
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Becky Hogge’s Open Society Foundations report Winning the Web (May 2009) surveys grassroots activism around access to knowledge and intellectual-property reform. It examines coalition building, messaging and internet tools, with case studies from Canada, France, Brazil, New Zealand, Europe and the United States.
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The report is useful historical context for how campaigners approached those issues at that time. It is not evidence that the same tactics will work today: technology, policy venues and political conditions change, and the report does not establish a universally effective organizing formula.
How to assess an organizing effort
Whether the aim is a rights campaign, a policy coalition or an IXP, evaluate the work against its actual purpose rather than treating every activity as the same kind of success. Look for clear answers to these questions:
- Representation: Are affected people and relevant technical or civil-society groups involved in setting priorities?
- Decision-making: Are decision venues, responsibilities and timelines clear?
- Fit: Does the chosen activity—advocacy, public campaigning, training or infrastructure development—address the stated goal?
- Local context: Is the work designed for the communities, country and policy environment involved, or is a model being copied without adaptation?
- Durability: For an IXP or community network, are governance, neutral management, stakeholder trust and training being addressed as well as technical needs?
- Evidence: Are reported figures and outcomes attributed to their source, and is an organization’s own account distinguished from independent evaluation?
Open internet organizing is most useful to understand as a set of connected practices, not a single campaign or institution. Coalitions can bring public-interest priorities together; digital-rights advocates can engage policy processes; and local organizers can build the relationships, skills and infrastructure that make connectivity possible.
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