I want to start writing articles about political issues in my country. I would prefer not getting fired from my day job or going to prison because of it, so I will be writing under a pseudonym.
Are there any alternatives to WordPress that play nice with TOR/TAILS? WordPress is difficult to use with its complicated block editor.
I need something that is easy for a non-technical person like me. And also free, since any payment can be tied back to my identity.
If you’re comfortable with markdown, you can check out static site generators like Hugo or Jekyll. Astro is also an option.
Thanks, I will check them out, since a lot of users have recommended these three.
Static sites are the way, especially for a free tier.
Also +1 for Astro from me.
Using an LLM to customize it and set up all the scheduling etc is also very handy.
While some services support payment in crypto, be advised that there’s no such thing as complete privacy on the internet.
Three letter agencies will routinely run TOR exit nodes and monitor traffic. You can be profiled merely on your browser configuration and usage behavior (eg mostly posts during daytime in specific country), sentence analysis and words you use. A determined government actor with unlimited resources will be able to track you down sooner or later. They did find Silk Road creators, albeit it took them years.
That being said, tails + tor is a good option. Maybe over VPN so your ISP can’t see you’re running tor. Run it from USB if possible, that can be quickly discarded. If possible, do not use the computer for anything else - hardware can be fingerprinted. Use a static site generator (such as Hugo). Host your blog on IPFS. Try not to have predictable patterns / times when posting. Run your text through a local LLM to change the words and sentences.
If you opt for a commercial service, find one that accepts payments in Monero, which is completely private.
Other than that - good luck.
A few people recommend Hugo. If you download a template and don’t edit anything, you simply write in markdown and the project generates each markdown file as a blog post typically. Might fit your use case.
I personally don’t really like Hugo, but I was trying to edit things.
Pure HTML pages is easier to setup nowadays as well. You can download a template, and then write whatever you want. If you get stuck LLMs are pretty good at basic HTML, I’d just be careful about it seeing anything you write that might be sensitive.
If you must use an llm, and only for simple drudgery like converting a RTF file to html then styling it under direction, you can run a small local model for that job. Keep it offline and private. A 4B coding model will run on most modern computers.
Perhaps Hugo? It is very lightweight unlike WordPress.
Also you might be interested in I2P instead of Tor as well.
I want other people to be able to read my articles. I am using TOR to protect myself and my family, but the website itself needs to be on the clearnet.
Well I think you have to look in to what tor is and how it works a bit more in that case.
You can access the clearnet from tor. But a service running on tor is a hidden service. Usually only accessible over tor. Unless you mirror the service on the clear web. Which defeats the purpose of using tor anyway in your case.
If your intent is just to put your writing out there, I’ve heard Mastodon and Nostr can be used over Tor? Not sure about the character limits though, those might be annoying.
Infosec Exchange allows for
10,00011,000 words per post.Mastodon is not designed for long form articles with propert formatting and multiple hyperlinks.
