Nostr notes by Write.as Blog

Today, February 2, marks 11 years since we officially ...

2026-02-02T18:17:12Z

Today, February 2, marks **11** years since we officially launched Write.as! What started as a minimal, anonymous article publishing platform in 2015 has since grown into an ecosystem of apps, a community of writers, and an open source platform called [WriteFreely](https://writefreely.org ) powering it all.

To celebrate, for the next two weeks ending February 16th, we're having a sale on our long-term, [5-year Pro plan](https://write.as/5years ), and [iOS app](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/writefreely/id1531530896 ). You can read all about it on [our Write.as Deals newsletter](https://write.as/deals/celebrating-11-years-on-the-web ).

##

In the beginning

When we launched Write.as in 2015, the internet was quite a different place. Our founder, Matt, saw some of the issues of the time, and wanted to build a product that directly addressed them, with digital privacy at the forefront.

At the time, the world was still hearing news of mass surveillance by intelligence agencies around the world, combined with what we already knew about the dominant tech business model that has since only continued to metastasize, summed up in a then-new term called “*[surveillance capitalism](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract*id=2594754)_.”

On top of that, we recognized the cycle that cheap, free-flowing venture capital perpetuated, as helpful products sprouted up with all cash and no business model, only to go away once the money ran out. Over and over, people would connect and create on these new apps and platforms, only to see them close down without much notice.

We wanted to do things differently: encouraging free expression by protecting privacy, and building with an eye toward the next decade, not the next funding round.

##

How far we’ve come

Now 11 years later, we’ve grown to host over 600,000 users and 6.6 million posts. We’ve helped non-bloggers start blogging, and writers find new community and readers to share their work with.

We’ve released our [source code](https://github.com/writefreely/writefreely ), so anyone can host their own individual blog or entire writing community, where they have choice and control over their data and how the app runs. We were one of the first platforms to bring long-form writing to the modern open social web (the “fediverse” as powered by ActivityPub), and have since grown with it over the years. There are now [hundreds of independent blogs and communities](https://fedidb.com/software/writefreely ) running on WriteFreely across the web!

In the years since launching, we’ve also inspired similar minimalist blogging platforms and anonymous publishing tools. And we’ve stuck to our [original principles](https://write.as/principles ) — that we would always remain ad- and tracking-free; that we would be funded by our customers, not venture capital; and that we would continue building the open web.

##

Looking ahead

So what’s next? As always, we’ll continue carefully maintaining the platform and tending to everyone publishing on Write.as. We’ll continue developing WriteFreely, so you’ll never be locked in with us, and can host your data where you please.

We’ll also continue developing new features where they make sense. Some are planned that will help more people interact with your blogs from across the open web, and we have plenty of small quality-of-life fixes we hope to get out soon.

As always, we’re honored to be the platform of choice for so many writers around the world, and to be trusted with your words. If you haven’t subscribed to our 5-year Pro plan yet, be sure to do that while [our sale is going on](https://write.as/deals/celebrating-11-years-of-write-as ). Otherwise, we’re proud to be a success story for building sustainable, open and long-term products for the web, and we look forward to doing it for many, many more years to come!

As always, thank you so much for writing with us.

#anniversary

We’re re-opening completely free accounts on Write.as, so more ...

2024-10-18T15:32:50Z

We’re re-opening completely free accounts on Write.as, so more people can start a blog on our clean, distraction-free writing platform.

In late 2021, we announced that we were [closing free registrations](https://write.as/blog/changing-free-registrations ) for new users. This was mostly an experiment to help us focus on the paying customers that keep our small business running, and provide a better experience all around.

Since then, we’ve been able to launch our social platform [Remark.as](https://remark.as/ ), continue evolving [WriteFreely](https://writefreely.org/ ), and add a ton of features around collaboration.

In this time, we’ve also realized that free accounts are one of the best ways for people to get started on our platform. While some people know what they’re looking for, and happily upgrade to our full Pro tier within the 2-week trial period, others just need a place to casually write when they feel like it. This takes a longer time, and doesn’t fit our time-based trial model, so we want to support these writers too.

Another goal of closing free accounts was to limit the number of spam accounts on Write.as. As a long-running platform with plenty of positive search engine authority on our domain, we’re a prime target for Search Engine Optimizers and spammers of every kind. Closing free accounts reduced the number of abusive actors we saw, but never stopped them completely.

Now that free accounts are open again, we plan to develop new anti-spam measures that can eventually be used by all WriteFreely instances to reduce the amount of abuse they receive.

##

New and existing users

Now, anyone can grab a Free Write.as account, and get a permanent space to write online — you can [get started here](https://write.as/start ). Our Free tier includes all the basics, including Markdown support, our Fediverse integration, and even [support for monetization](https://write.as/blog/write-as-x-sub-club ) through services like sub.club. See our [Pricing page](https://write.as/pricing ) for the full comparison with our other tiers.

Along with this, if you signed up for a trial between January 1, 2022 and today but never upgraded to Pro, your account is now completely free! This is our way of saying *thanks* for sticking around — and if you haven’t revisited Write.as in a while, now is a great time to check it out again.

Thanks for writing with us, and we can’t wait to see what you create!

#free #Writeas #accounts #fediverse

We’re making a change today that will affect new writers ...

2024-08-30T17:45:31Z

We’re making a change today that will affect new writers looking to join Write.as. Due to a couple issues we’ve encountered recently, we’ll now require an email address to create a **new** Write.as account.

While our high privacy standards remain unchanged, this new requirement will help us reduce abuse and provide a better experience for our writers and customers. Read on for more.

##

Your Privacy

First, we’ve always prided ourselves on the privacy we offer our users — from minimizing data collection to resisting unfounded user data requests from entities both public and private. With this new email requirement, **none of that changes**.

As you can see in our [Privacy Policy](https://write.as/privacy ), we still maintain our stringent data practices, never sharing your personal information with third parties for marketing or other reasons, and encrypting data like email addresses in transit *and* at rest.

Though we recommend all Write.as users [add an email address](https://write.as/me/settings ) to their account, this new requirement only affects people who haven’t signed up yet. Going forward, an email address is no longer optional — everyone will need to supply that *and* verify that they own it in order to start a Write.as blog.

##

Why Make This Change

There are two main motivations for this change: a botnet attack we endured last month, and the customer service workload we’ve seen increase over the years.

Over the course of July, we encountered a distributed attack on our service from bots creating Write.as accounts only to test out stolen credit card numbers. Thankfully, with our payment processor Stripe behind the scenes, we were able to prevent and block most fraudulent charges — but many still got through.

We’ve since refunded these fraudulent charges to their rightful owners, blocked the attacks, and put systems in place to prevent this in the future. Going forward, we remain vigilant for attacks like this, and will continue refining the automated protections we have in place.

In the coming weeks, **new** customers will see additional data requirements around payments — standard billing information you’d supply anywhere on the web — designed to further prevent these fraudulent attempts. This is critically needed, as this activity cost us time *and* extra revenue losses from both refunds and chargebacks (where we incur a much larger fee).

###

Customer Service

Otherwise, we’ve seen our customer service workload increase over the years due to accounts without an email address on them. While we’ve always encouraged users not to share this information with us if they don’t want to, we’ve now seen more issues than not from it.

Without an email address on your account, we’re unable to send payment receipts, upcoming renewal reminders, or password-reset emails. And if you ever lose access to your account due to a forgotten password (*hey, it happens!*), a human on the team has to do an extra level of sleuthing, while maintaining our security standards, just to restore your access to your work.

At this point, we’ve decided it’s more important that writers have their email address on their Write.as account than the minor privacy enhancement they might get from withholding it. While still not required, we **strongly suggest** that any current Write.as users [add an email address to their account](https://write.as/me/settings ) today, if they haven’t already.

We hope everyone will find this minor change reasonable, and as always, we thank you for continuing to trust us with your writing!

If you have any questions or concerns, we hope you’ll give your feedback on Remark.as ([Discuss...](https://remark.as/p/blog/requiring-an-email-address )) or by replying in the fediverse [@write_as@writing.exchange](/@/write_as@writing.exchange ).

#changes #email

Nostr notes by Write.as Blog

Today, February 2, marks **11** years since we officially ...

We’re re-opening completely free accounts on Write.as, so more ...

We’re making a change today that will affect new writers ...

Today, February 2, marks 11 years since we officially ...