10 Best Anonymous Blogging Platforms
Blogging is a great way to express your opinions, beliefs, and thoughts as a writer – and it’s witnessed a real boom ever since the invention of the internet. However, no matter how much you’d like to express yourself, sometimes you’d like to keep your anonymity. Lately, we’ve been witnessing a real polarization of political opinions and the development of cancel culture, meaning that anyone who ever so slightly disagrees with you will be coming for your head or at least the digital equivalent of that.
There’s a real possibility that your public blog posts can have an actual effect on your personal, real life. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become unpopular for bloggers who wish to remain anonymous, as far as sharing sensitive opinions goes.
Be it that your opinions are controversial or you’re simply uncomfortable with outing yourself as a writer behind your content, there are ways you can blog anonymously. There are many advantages of this option, especially knowing that you will never be personally targeted for the writing you post. For this article, we’ve compiled a list of the ten best blogging platforms that ensure anonymous blogging.
1. Write.as
Write.as is intended for users who want to get into anonymous blogging without the whole registration hassle. This blogging site started in 2015, defines itself as a minimalist writing platform, focused on privacy.
“To start, we’re building tools and services that help everyone publish their work online, with their privacy intact. Each of our tools does one thing well, and nothing more — the goal is to stay out of your way, so you’re free to create.“
In order to start blogging on this site, all you need to do is click on „write something“, located on their homepage. Once you’re done, click on the „publish“ icon. Yes, it’s that simple.
Write.as will set you as an anonymous user by default. You are entitled to the option of changing this and setting a real username. If you change your username to Mark, the address to your blog will be write.as/mark – all of your published work will be there, listen in order of publication.
Internet privacy, something that’s rather difficult to find nowadays, is the ultimate mission of this blog and it’s located at the heart of the company.
“We founded Write.as in 2015 with the simple goal of building a writing tool that gave people some privacy online. “
Since their foundation, hundreds of thousands of people have used the site for their anonymous blogging. The company itself is completely free from outside investment, meaning that its agenda is aligned with the users needing it.
In their own words “In the end, we want to use the web as a tool for spreading empathy around the world; for helping people tell their stories, so we all might find a better understanding of one another.“
Write.as offers three payment options, core, pro, and team. The core option is the basic, free option that we’re all free to use. The pro option gives you a permanent, personalized home on the internet. You can choose custom themes, newsletters, photo hosting and you can have three different blogs. The team option allows you to gather submissions, collaborate, and publish to a shared publication. It includes shared blogs, team management and all the features of the pro option.
This site has its own following (which you can join on various social media), and there are writers you can follow on the site.
The site doesn’t track you, and you can write anonymously or under different identities.
The only cons of this site are: text formatting functions are considered very basic, and you don’t have the option of uploading videos, images or other media (in the free version).
2. Telegra.ph
Not much is known about telegra.ph. It was launched in 2016 by the same company behind Telegram, the anonymous texting app (mind the pattern). The site doesn’t require you to register or sign in with any social media accounts.
The interface is similar to Medium, and it allows the embedding of images from your computer. The publication of your writing is instantaneous (once you hit “Publish”), and the posts are shareable on social media (although, that kind of beats the whole point of anonymous blogging).
This blog’s simplicity is not without its drawbacks, though. The lack of user history will lead to losing track of your published post if you happen to lose the link. You need to keep the link of your post after posting it (if you want to check up on it and read the comments).
The nature of anonymity will also naturally allow internet trolls and abusers to abuse this (pun intended), which is a problem that tech giants have been facing ever since the conception of social media.
Telegraph permits search engines to index the content of the posts, meaning that it somewhat lowers the anonymity.
Telegram, the anonymous messaging app, has been reported to be used often by terrorist groups, including ISIS. That means that both Telegram and Telegra.ph is on NSA’s radar.
The absolute pros of this option are: posting of images, short URLs, encrypted connection, and a very nice look.
3. Txt.fyi
Txt.fyi is the most down to earth site on this list. This is a direct quote from its description “Welcome to the dumbest publishing platform on the web.”
This is a very simple text editor, one that publishes your pages as a static post. It’s powered by WordPress. The site is very fast, light, and has an 80s retro look. It’s super simple, it’s a side project for a coder and writer, not a business, so he has no financial interest in finding a way to make money off you, there’s a clear statement of the blog being as tracker free as possible, and it uses an encrypted connection.
There are few drawbacks: if you want anyone to see your post you need to send them the URL, and you can’t upload images.
There’s no tracking, ad-tech, web fonts, analytics, javascript, cookies, databases, user accounts, comments, friending, likes, follower counts or other quantifiers of social capital. The only practical way for anyone to find out about a posting is if the author links to it elsewhere.
Search engines are instructed not to index posts, meaning that you won’t be able to find a post unless you have a link to it.
4. Notepin
The main advantage Notepin possesses over other blogs on this list is the option of posting images and videos. When working with Notepin, you pick a username that becomes part of your URL. When creating, you can write whatever you want and add images, as well.
Technically, Notepin allows you to upload literally any file, but non-images will just show as placeholder text.
Notepin has two payment options, pro, and blogging. Pro, as a yearly price of $11, allows you to upload images, customize your blog with seven different themes, plays background ambient sounds that help you focus on writing, provides a speed reader at a speed of 300 words per minute, allows you to toggle between night and day mode, and lastly – you get updates on Notepin’s new features.
Blogging option, $29 a year, has everything the pro option does, and it adds email subscriptions to your blog, allows you to connect your own custom domain to your site with SSL support, allows integration with Google Analytics to track your blog’s traffic, customizes your SEO, allows you to create private posts, removes Notepin branding and lastly, ensures password protection.
5. David Partson’s Excrypted Page Maker
This one is relatively unknown – it literally doesn’t even have a name, and there’s very little we know about it. It’s also very basic – it encrypts anything you write and hides it behind a password. However, it’s just the creator’s side project – meaning that we can’t be completely sure that his encryption is entirely safe.
Another downside is that the URLs are so long that users will almost certainly have to use a URL shortener before disseminating, which will create a new kind of tracking.
6. Lyfster
Lyfster is an app you can download right now, and get all that weight off your shoulders. Unlike Vent (which we’re going to discuss next) – Lyfster removes the focus on emotional support from its user interface – which means that you can easily talk about whatever it is that you want to talk about, without looking for comfort.
You can post anonymously or with a username, it’s up to you, and you can form your texts exclusively in a textual form, or you can add media like images.
When it comes to functionality, the way the app works, it’s very similar to Vent – your published content is searchable by other users.
Even though Lyfster seems to try to take a step back from confession material, it seems that the community in the app refuses that idea. Most people discussing heartbreaks receive a lot of emotional nurturing.
Lyfster insists on promoting itself as an anonymous posting platform, but the community is still majorly posting confessional content.
7. Vent
Vent is an app used mostly for, well…venting. Developed in 2014, Vent has been letting people express their fears and doubts for over half a decade. Insisting on confessional material, Vent’s pitch is “Get it off your chest.”, but here you can do it anonymously (although it does ask for your email, but that information stays only with the app).
What’s interesting about Vent is that it’s a mobile phone app, meaning that your thoughts can be shared on the go. It’s available for both Android systems and the iOS.
The app allows users to search for a keyword, which in return makes your posts much more visible to the wider audience. This supports the idea that you get the support you need from people who are actually interested in whatever it is that’s troubling you.
The app will require an email address for verification, however, this is visible only to you, and you can set your username to whatever you’d like it to be.
Vent makes it easier for the audience to search and find your posts, it allows users to connect with one another and chat, and it does not appear in search results on Google. It’s also allowing you to post on the go, from your mobile phone. The only real drawback of Vent is the fact it needs email verification.
8. Anonymous WordPress Blogging
Well, just in case you didn’t know it, there’s the option of blogging anonymously on WordPress. Credit where credit is due, all the apps and sites we’ve already mentioned deserve their fair share of it, but no blogging tool can even compare to WordPress.
If you want to stay anonymous as an author, but still have people find your posts on search engines – you can do it with WordPress. You can have all the advantages of a regular WordPress blog and still have your anonymity, but there are a few steps you’ll need to take.
Firstly, you’ll need to register an account on WordPress with a temp-mail ID, do not use Gmail. Following that, you’ll need to purchase a domain and a host. When doing this, use a proxy name and (I can’t stress how important this is) – pay with cryptocurrency. This way, no one will be able to trace the site back to you. When you pay and identify as you, literally anyone can track it back to you.
Because WordPress’s posts are indexed on search engines, so even though your blog may be anonymous – your posts will still appear in searches.
9. Vigyaa
Vigyaa claims to be the only platform where you can be 100% anonymous, there’s no login required and no IP tracing. The site was imagined as a safe place, where anyone who wishes to express their thoughts, concerns, emotions, ideas, experiences and more, can do that without the fear of being judged and labeled. The creators believe that creating an anonymous platform can break barriers in communication and stigmatization.
A site is a place where anyone can freely disclose their thoughts and emotions in a safe space. Vigyaa’s servers only collect the article’s URL, titles, and IDs in the browser’s local storage, but they don’t store any personal information.
No login is required.
The site has a reply feature, as well as a feature where you can follow a post. This way the users have more control over the posts that they are interested in. This was created in the best interest of sharing openly and reading other stories.
The site explicitly suggests that you do not “share any personal details to protect your identity and ensure that your posts are not reflective of any hate towards a particular individual or a social group. We expect that our users will be polite and respectful in their posts. To ensure that the guidelines are being followed, the posts will be regularly moderated. For those who might find the posts on Vigyaa.io insightful and would like to share them on other platforms, we expect them to kindly share the posts via the share link and to refrain from copying and pasting the posts.”
The site is vastly aimed at helping people overcome depression, anxiety, and other underappreciated issues which mostly qualify as mental health issues. There’s also a section of the blog dedicated to other important topics; anonymous confessions, narcissistic abuse, and social injustice. The blog also has a helpline with plenty of advice for people in trouble.
10. Pen.io
I’m afraid that I can’t say too much about Penio. Aside from its unfortunate name, the site is a simple, text-based, anonymous blogging platform. To publish your writing online, all you have to do is enter the name for your page and set a password (in order to edit your work later on). The site is completely free.
There are many reasons why a person would want to blog anonymously, blowing the whistle on a company’s (or in the Snowden case – the whole country’s) wrongdoings, or simply addressing concerns on a possibly controversial topic – there are ways you can blog anonymously. It’s important to know, however, that the Internet is a rabbit hole, one that’s difficult to completely explore, and one that might be impossible to travel through traceless. When setting foot on this journey, make sure to do everything in your power to keep yourself safe from anyone who wouldn’t want you to say what you’re saying.