NPR CEO who believes pursuit of truth is a ‘distraction’ chairs board of ‘Free Speech’ Signal Foundation

The Signal Foundation is the nonprofit behind the messaging app known for its security and free speech commitments. Signal experienced a surge in users in 2021, boasting over 40 million users, thanks to its reputation for security due to end-to-end encryption and its independence from major tech companies.

Maher is currently the chair of the Signal Foundation's board of directors, a company allegedly committed to free speech, despite her long history of making comments that go against free speech.

Her bio on the foundation’s website states, “Katherine Maher is the former CEO and Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, responsible for Wikipedia. She is currently a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, where her work focuses on the intersection of technology, human rights, and democracy.”

Maher's comments about free speech, made during a 2021 TED Talk, have drawn criticism. During the talk, she asserted that truth is subjective, drawing on her experience as CEO of Wikipedia from 2016 to 2021.

In her speech, Maher praised Wikipedia's model of crowd-sourced information, suggesting that contentious topics such as politics and religion are effectively addressed without a focus on objective truth.

"When it comes to the hard things, the places where we are prone to disagreement, say politics and religion—Well, as it turns out, not only does Wikipedia's model work there, it actually works really well,” Maher said.

"Because in our normal lives," she continued, "these contentious conversations tend to erupt over a disagreement about what the truth actually is. But the people who write these articles, they're not focused on the truth.

Maher also received backlash recently on social media for a video posted by journalist Christopher Rufo which showed her explaining that as CEO of Wikipedia, she "took a very active approach to disinformation," and coordinated censorship "through conversations with government.”