Ask HN: How to create a pseudonymous blog in 2022? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to create a pseudonymous blog in 2022?

2 pointsanon-6724 comments

I want to create a pseudonymous blog. Requirements being: 1- can’t be tied back to my real identity. At least not until some state actor wants it. 2- not easily censorable. I’d describe Twitter and Facebook as being easily censorable since if a mob of people report your account, they will suspend it. Again, I don’t want it to be completely censorproof. Like if AWS decides to take it down - that’s not a scenario I want to protect against. But at the same time I don’t want to be at the mercy of some random platform’s content evaluation team. 3- simple setup. I am technical but not Linux hacker technical.

Imagine if someone like Jordan Peterson had to write a blog without the fear of being cancelled, or losing their job. He has controversial opinions but he is also not trying to incite an attack at Capitol.

Simplest option seems to be to buy a domain and self host. But could my identity be linked to email via domain name?

> At least not until some state actor wants it

In this case, just bootstrapping a pseudonymous identity using a separate prepaid phone (and from there create email address, etc) should be enough. From there, host it on any paid webhost that isn't based on "growth & engagement" and doesn't care about public opinion.

> But could my identity be linked to email via domain name?

Since you're not concerned about state actors, not really. Whois privacy services (offered by most registrars) are sufficient to protect against your current threat model, though nothing prevents you from signing up with fake details anyway.

NamesCheep (and a pile of others) allow you to avoid the public id on the registration. They (and a pile of others) have very affordable web building plug-ins.

You could also just spin up a github account and create a personal page there. If your content is rather static (doesn't change per user), then you could create a simple html template and copy paste the page, and create new posts rather easily. It wouldn't support comments, but you might not want that..

You could also just set up a new email address that you'd use for all interactions.

Get a domain, register it anonymously and make sure to use the registrar's privacy add-on to block WHOIS info.

Host your own wordpress site (or non-wordpress) with your content. The hosting can be done by yourselves via your own web server (if you have the knowledge) or be left with hosting providers. If you host the content yourself via your own web-server, there will be one less organization which can take it down.

Or go by the 'dark web' route and host it via Tor, I2P, Lokinet etc (obviously there will be less people to read it).

Nearlyfreespeech.net may be good for that, they also have an identity-masking domain registration service.

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