Hacktivist group Anonymous have launched a crowdfunding campaign to expand its coverage through a dedicated citizen journalism site, raising US$54,798 in funding.
The group’s Indiegogo campaign, with launched with an initial target of US$2,000, will be used to fund the initial development and hosting of Your Anon News.
Your Anon News currently exists on Twitter and Tumblr services, but the new website will host breaking news, reports and blogs from independent reporters.
In its campaign profile, Anonymous said: “Over the past two years Your Anon News (YAN) has been many things to many people and has continuously evolved under the guidance of numerous contributors.
“Since our humble beginnings as a new account we have always resisted being held to the constraints placed upon mainstream media outlets, but were limited to the tools available to us via Twitter and Tumblr. Those of us contributing to YAN have always desired to expand our capabilities and to report, not just aggregate, the news.
“Our goal as YAN contributors will be to take what we have learned over the past few years and create a new environment were content is not determined solely by external sources.”
1,309 backers supported the campaign, which Anonymous says will help “engineer a new website which will allow us to collect breaking reports and blog postings from the best independent reporters online.”
The hacktivist group is rarely out of the news, most recently earning headlines for hacking North Korean social media accounts and mining company Anglo American.
