Post
Happy Presidents Day.
Two weeks ago, the CIA shut down the World Factbook - a public
domain reference on every country, used by 6 million people
monthly since 1997.
We built a replacement:
https://openfactbook.org
261 countries · Instant search · Country comparisons
Public data should stay public.
#OpenData #CivicTech #OpenSource #PresidentsDay
#PublicDomain #DataRescue
Wow, I didn't know that got shut down. I used to cruise that when bored at work years ago, before I knew about wikipedia ;)
@openfactbook this seems cool, but “we built a replacement for the world factbook in two weeks”seems like a red flag that you haven’t actually done that.
Quick clarification since this is getting attention: we didn't
recreate 60 years of CIA research in two weeks!
The country data has been available as open-source JSON for years
(github.com/factbook/factbook.json - 1,000+ stars). The last
update was January 22, 2026.
We built the front-end: search, compare tool, rankings, and a modern way to browse it all. The data is public domain we just made it accessible again.
Feedback welcome. 🌍
Feedback is bravo, brava, bravissimo!
