Systemic Altruism
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Justice & public goodsPreliminary editorial review

Tor Project

Develops privacy and anti-censorship technologies that civil-society organizations and other users can build on.

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Systemic Altruism practice potential: 83–93/100
90% of weighted axes reviewed. A mechanism hypothesis, not proven effectiveness or a donation recommendation.

Who this work enables

Tools & support for charities: Privacy and anti-censorship technologies for rights groups, nonprofit newsrooms and other public-interest users.

Open-source evidence · license checked

License checked 2026-10-27. This is not a security audit, proof of current support or effectiveness, or a promise of free hosting. A sponsor or steward is not necessarily the sole developer. Unchecked profiles are not evidence of closed code. No extra score points are added.

Humanity’s Checklist source match

Gatekeepers — editorial, partial alignment.

Privacy and anti-censorship infrastructure can reduce technical and information-access gates. It is not a guarantee of anonymity, equal access or the checklist’s specific builder portal.

Explicit checklist adoption: not verified. A mechanism match is not an affiliation, endorsement, evidence of effectiveness or a scoring bonus. Read the practice.

Focus classification: 2026-10-27. Based on the organization’s dated official sources below; earlier axis-review dates are unchanged.

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The proposed pathway

Reusable privacy and anti-censorship infrastructure

Six dimensions, with rationale

Structural depth

4 / 4

Shared privacy infrastructure alters a technical constraint on communication and access across many organizations.

Institutional reach

4 / 4

The network and reusable protocols have international, cross-sector potential; this is not an audited count of people protected.

Durability

2 / 4

Open protocols and code can persist, but relay diversity, security updates, usability and anti-censorship work need continued support.

Scalability

4 / 4

Reusable privacy components can be adapted across services; threat modeling, network operations and integration still require expertise.

Funding additionality

Unreviewed

Unknown: current marginal funding, restricted allocations, delivery capacity and a credible counterfactual have not been audited.

Community agency

Unreviewed

Unknown: open source, consultations, memberships or participation do not by themselves establish audited consequential decision rights for affected communities.

Evidence and selection

Organization reported; current primary mechanism sources inspected and named license file checked

Illustrative inclusion to examine this mechanism. Inclusion is not an external recommendation or a verified comparative ranking.

A testable next question

Do supported nonprofit users obtain safer, more reliable access than with appropriate alternatives after usability, operational costs and adversarial risks are independently assessed?

Review confidence: Moderate for documented design; low for systemic attribution. Tor Project Inc.’s shared-infrastructure design; Arti is the named code example, not a license or security audit of the full Tor Browser/network portfolio.

What remains uncertain

No tool guarantees anonymity or safety. Misconfiguration, endpoint compromise, traffic analysis and local legal risks remain. Arti has component-specific license exceptions. Public repository files and activity were checked, but its API did not expose an archival-status flag; no current-support guarantee is made.

Sources to inspect

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Axis review: 2026-10-27 · weighting method v0.2 (2026-10-26) · Method, conflicts and coverage