Anonymous raises $54K for news site, will strike fear into the hearts of corporations everywhere

Anonymous Logo

By now, Anonymous is known pretty well for their deeds. In one of the infamous attacks in recent history hackers took down the Playstation Network for almost a month (24 days). Anonymous still denies that they had anything to do with the PSN attack and that one of the Anon hackers may have acted by themselves. Unfortunately, that has become the staple of their reign.

On Wednesday, an Indiegogo campaign wrapped up that was dedicated to funding an Anonymous based news site. “Jackal Anon” was reputedly the founder, and even though they originally set out to raise $2,000 they were able to raise $54,668.

The site will be called YAN, or Your Anon News and will share some of the same Anonymous based news content as their Twitter, and Tumblr accounts.

“Our goal was to disseminate information we viewed as vital separating it from the political and celebrity gossip that inundates the mainstream.”

Anonymous also claims that a dedicated news site will allow them “to collect breaking reports, and blogs from the best independent reporters online [and] provide feeds for citizen journalists who livestream events as they are taking place instead of the 10 second bites provided by the corporate media.

All of this information was presented in a traditional, yet slightly disturbing Anonymous themed video. If you haven’t seen one of their announcement videos yet, you might want to check out the one I’ve included below. I’d encourage you not to watch it late at night, when you’re at home alone. That voice will send chills down your spine.

At this point in time, there’s no way to tell if Anonymous will move to hire reporters of its own for the site or if they will call for volunteers.

Of course, the site will be developed by programmers and designers who volunteer their time.  Hopefully they will get some kind of reward for their hard work, but I digress.

We will rely heavily on the generosity of our supporters while developing this new site. Already, programmers and designers have come forward to donate their time. However, there are other aspects of running such a large project that require financial support.

On the funding page, Anonymous says that the funds will be used to “fill in any gaps in the development process as well as provide us with initial hosting.”

The $54K was raised by a total of 1307 contributors. It’s unfortunate that number didn’t make it to 1337 because that would be LEET. Backers were gifted coffee mugs, t-shirts, and hoodies all adorned with the Anonymous logo. It seems like their influence is spreading across the continent, instead of just the /b/ board on 4chan.

Anonymous Hoodie

Folks were also allowed to contribute to the project with Bitcoins, but for those that did they received no gifts. It’s a shame too because an Anonymous themed hoodie would look so chic in public.

[via Ars Technica, Your Anon News Indiegogo]

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