Matt Baer

Matt Baer is the founder of Write.as, a minimalist, privacy-focused blogging platform he started in late 2014 out of concern about how social media and search engines were tracking what people shared. It began as a place for completely anonymous writing and grew into a calm, ad-free publishing platform with custom domains, newsletters and themes.

In 2018 Baer open-sourced the software as WriteFreely and connected it to the fediverse, letting anyone host their own blog or writing community. His company, Musing Studio, has since built a connected suite around it: Snap.as for photos, Submit.as for managing writing submissions and Remark.as for conversations around blogs.

Baer describes the business as independent and entirely self-funded, answering only to the people who pay for it, and says he aims to run it for decades. He maintains WriteFreely largely himself, with community funding through Open Collective.