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anoni.net/news and Same Day, Years Apart

The anoni.net News banner on a dark blue background, with the word "News" in large type and the line "Privacy, anonymity and censorship news, read from a tech and open-source angle, with a view from Asia"

Most news on privacy, anonymity networks and internet censorship is published in English from a European or North American vantage point, and coverage tends to stop at the start of a story. anoni.net now runs a news site, anoni.net/news, that reads these stories from a technology and open-source angle, explains the first step readers can take and what it costs, and keeps following each story as it develops.

Since 26 September 2026, one or two pieces have gone up at midnight Taipei time every day, in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese and English at once. A companion series updated daily, Same Day, Years Apart, revisits privacy, anonymity and censorship events that happened on the same date in earlier years.

Why we started anoni.net/news

Most privacy and censorship news is published in English by digital rights groups, security researchers and open-source projects in Europe and North America, and the story is told from where they stand. Readers in Asia are usually left to work out whether it reaches them at all. When Signal opened phone-number-free registration in its Android beta on 16 September, the question we heard most was whether the payment record would lead back to the person (our analysis is in Signal Login and the payment trail it leaves). SIM cards are registered to a real name in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, so that question carries more weight here than in many places.

The English edition is written with that gap in mind. Its Perspective section is longer than the Chinese ones and compares laws and service availability across Asia, including when the story is about an American or European product. We know technology and the open-source ecosystem best, so we start from the technology, and we write for readers who do not code: what a tool solves, how much it takes to learn and install, and whether it can be trusted.

Most coverage stops at the start of a story. Whether a bill was later amended or passed, or whether a feature left beta, is often hard to find reported at all, and privacy and censorship stories can run for months, with each stage changing what readers should do. Follow-ups are therefore a standing part of the work. For most pieces, we note a date to check back and what to look for, reread the original and official sources when that date comes, and write a follow-up when there is news, so readers can keep track of the same story.

For Canada's Bill C-22, lawful access and encryption, we will check at the end of October on the Senate's progress and on whether Signal or VPN providers announce they are leaving Canada. For Spain's administrative block on archive.today, the date is 27 October, and the questions are whether the block list has grown and whether anyone has challenged it in court. A follow-up opens with a one-line recap, and the earlier piece links to the latest one just below its headline.

How stories are chosen and checked

Candidates currently come from about thirty regular sources, including digital rights groups, security research teams, open-source projects, news reporting and independent investigations, plus daily picks from tech communities. The list keeps growing, and we add sites and projects that regularly cover stories that matter.

We shortlist by headline, then read the original to confirm there is something useful to add. Priority goes to things readers can download, configure or follow today, and then to changes that alter how people already work, such as a common tool changing how it is used or encryption and anonymity tools facing new policy. When a piece covers a tool, we check the project page first and state its licence, maintenance status, barrier to entry and whether a Chinese interface exists, so a reader can decide whether to try it.

Every factual sentence traces back to the original report or an official source, listed in the Sources panel at the end of each piece. Versions, prices, supported platforms and regions are checked against official pages on the day of writing. When we find an error after publication, we correct all three language versions together, and because the articles live in a public GitHub repository, every change can be checked. The full description is on About anoni.net News.

Eight categories

Pieces are filed under eight categories: Encryption & Messaging, Tracking & Personal Data, Surveillance & Spyware, Censorship & Access Control, Phones & Apps, Security & Scams, Civil Society Tech Practice, and the Weekly Brief, a round-up of shorter items. Select a category to see every piece in it.

Published in the site's second week:

Same Day, Years Apart

Same Day, Years Apart has one page per date, published after each day's stories. Each page looks back at one event in privacy, anonymity networks or censorship on that date, and follows it to where you stand today and what you can set up now. Every year on the same date, we add a new paragraph and keep the earlier ones as they were, so over time a page shows how far an event sits from the present.

Three questions from the pages online now. Guess first, then open that date's page for the answer.

  1. Netflix released more than 100 million member ratings for a recommendation contest, and two weeks later researchers had picked out individual members. Which year was that? The answer is on 2 October.
  2. The Great Firewall of China blocked Tor's public relays by IP address, leaving about 80% of them unreachable. Which year was that? The answer is under "Also on this day" on 28 September.
  3. Yahoo disclosed that a single breach had affected every one of its user accounts. Which year was that? The answer is on 3 October.

Other dates cover events such as Taiwan's constitutional ruling against fingerprinting for national ID cards and what is often called the world's first data protection law, all browsable from Same Day, Years Apart.

Subscribing

Each language version has its own RSS feed, with no account and no email address needed. The feed addresses and how to set up a reader are in Following sites with RSS. On Bluesky, follow @news.anoni.net, which posts in Traditional Chinese and English when each piece goes live. The site needs no JavaScript and loads no third-party fonts or resources, and the onion address for reading over Tor is in the footer of every page.

Reporting and taking part