FOIA Requests vs Defuddle

FOIA Requests

By James Anditis (Journalism)

Draft and file Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain government records.

Defuddle

By Steph Ango (Kepano / Obsidian)

Turn messy web pages into clean notes — no ads, no clutter, just the content you need.

FOIA Requests

• Provides ready-to-use templates for federal and state FOIA requests with proper legal language
• Explains the 9 federal exemptions and state-specific public records laws across all 50 states
• Guides you through fee waiver requests, appeals processes, and tracking submission status
• Includes reference tables for state-by-state laws and legislative exemptions
• Offers strategic advice on crafting specific, targeted requests that agencies are more likely to fulfill

Defuddle

• Removes ads, navigation, and clutter from any web page
• Extracts clean article text in a note-friendly format
• Pulls out key metadata like title, description, and domain
• Saves cleaned content to files for later reference

Reach for FOIA Requests when…

• You're investigating a story and need official documents from a government agency
• You need to understand what records are legally available in your state or at the federal level
• You're appealing a denied FOIA request or requesting a fee waiver
• You're tracking multiple public records requests and need to follow up with agencies

Reach for Defuddle when…

• You're researching a topic and need to save articles without all the junk
• You want to capture blog posts or docs for your notes or knowledge base
• You're analyzing content from multiple sources and need clean text to work with