Citation Needed
citationneeded.news · Personal blog · on HN since 2024
Molly White writes a newsletter on cryptocurrency, tech, Wikipedia, and the open web, and runs her own self-hosted site.
What HN saysCommenters recommend it for crypto coverage and her review of Read Write Own, and cite her posts on POSSE and independent publishing.
75HN people shared it
16linked it in comments
86stories submitted
747story points
3 months agolast shared
2024people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Review: Chris Dixon's Read Write Own10 people · 51 points · first shared 2024 · 2 comments on HN
- 2Posse: Reclaiming social media in a fragmented world6 people · 14 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 3Molly White: Migrating from Substack to self-hosted Ghost: the details5 people · 74 points · first shared 2024 · 20 comments on HN
- 4AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?5 people · 28 points · first shared 2024 · 1 comments on HN
- 5Elon Musk and the right's war on Wikipedia4 people · 56 points · first shared 2025 · 11 comments on HN
- 6Curate your own newspaper with RSS4 people · 36 points · first shared 2025 · 3 comments on HN
- 7I am my own legal department: the promise and peril of "just go independent"4 people · 16 points · first shared 2024 · 2 comments on HN
- 8"Wait, not like that": Free and open access in the age of generative AI3 people · 132 points · first shared 2025 · 47 comments on HN
- 9Coinbase's substantial data breach coincides with convenient TOS update3 people · 3 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
- 10Homepage3 people · first shared 2025
- 11OpenAI featured chatbot is pushing extreme surgeries to "subhuman" men2 people · 43 points · first shared 2025 · 17 comments on HN
- 12Coinbase appears to have violated campaign finance laws with 25M donation2 people · 43 points · first shared 2024 · 3 comments on HN
- 13We can have a different web2 people · 36 points · first shared 2024 · 36 comments on HN
- 14It Matters. I Care2 people · 17 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 15Big publishers think libraries are the enemy2 people · 10 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
consumer451 · 2025-07-17
> a top crypto priority sponsored by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.).
These three Dem clowns deserve derision, but for full context, this is a GOP sponsored bill, with a full-on cryptocurrency sponsored GOP government in complete control of the country. Scourge of SV, David O. Sacks is "Crypto Czar," while POTUS is circulating his own shitcoin.
For more information on this topic, check out Molly White's "Citation Needed." She is truly excellent at her job.
https://www.citationneeded.news/
https://www.youtube.com/@molly0xfff/videos
lxgr · 2026-05-06
You can always follow the POSSE pattern [1] (except for platforms that actively punish links to your own site of course). That way you get both the reach and remain independent in terms of content moderation.
[1] https://www.citationneeded.news/posse/
gchamonlive · 2026-03-03
And looking at her main website https://www.citationneeded.news/ there is a tip jar but it doesn't accept crypto. I was expecting her to take at least the major coins like Ada, Eth and BTC, but she's consistent with her views.
mminer · 2025-01-06
I’m enjoying Citation Needed by Molly White for its coverage of the crypto world: https://www.citationneeded.news
benzible · 2024-02-12
Related, from Molly White's excellent review of Chris Dixon's Read Write Own [1]:
> RSS is dead, he repeats endlessly throughout the book.[...] It's profoundly weird to read RSS's obituary as a person who checks her very-much-still-alive feed reader several times a day to get everything from cryptocurrency news to dinner ideas, and who rarely encounters a website that doesn't provide a functional feed.
[1] https://www.citationneeded.news/review-read-write-own-by-chris-dixon/
rlnvlc · 2025-05-21
Great timing: https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-84/
SkyEyedGreyWyrm · 2026-07-28
Seeing some of the conversations in the comments reminded me of this thread and post from a few years back "Migrating from Substack to self-hosted Ghost: the details":
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39016734
https://www.citationneeded.news/substack-to-self-hosted-ghost/
ChrisArchitect · 2026-06-30
Related:
Tech Influence Watch site: https://influence.citationneeded.news/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632474)
Blog post: https://www.citationneeded.news/tech-influence-watch/
Hasnep · 2025-05-25
Don't worry, it happens outside the US too! Just ctrl+f this page for "France": https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-84/
caycep · 2025-04-09
also, the always thorough Molly White https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-81/
brox · 2025-02-09
Molly White, a prolific Wikipedia editor, has written a good overview of how information source reliability is handled in practice: https://www.citationneeded.news/elon-musk-and-the-rights-war-on-wikipe… There's a process for how decisions about source legitimacy and reliability are made, and these "decisions aren’t made lightly and are frequently revisited: there have been over fifty discussions about the Daily Mail’s reliability, for example, with both sides being vehemently argued".
toomuchtodo · 2024-11-01
DylanSp · 2024-06-24
One nice thing I've seen is separating out footnotes (additional comments) from references (citations/links to external contents). It's probably not applicable to all blogs, but I like it in Citation Needed, Molly White's blog/newsletter; see https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-60/ as an example.
smlavine · 2024-04-11
Molly White wrote this neat piece a few months ago about migrating from Substack:
https://www.citationneeded.news/substack-to-self-hosted-ghost/
Intralexical · 2024-03-29
Sam Bankman-Fried is not a child.
https://www.citationneeded.news/sam-bankman-fried-is-not-a-child/
acatton · 2026-05-20
Don't worry about the small web. Most people running the small web don't do it for others but themselves. They don't care whether they have 5 visitors or 1 million. Visitors are just the cherry on top, my main reason for maintaining a small web page is to put down my thoughts, organize them, go back to them if I need to, and helping whichever stranger stumbles upon them along the way.
The small web and indie web audience doesn't use google. They use RSS readers:
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/rss-feeds-send-me-more-traffic-than-g…
https://matduggan.com/you-can-absolutely-have-an-rss-dependent-website…
Small web is there to stay, big tech can't do much about it:
https://www.citationneeded.news/we-can-have-a-different-web/
The only threats to small web are:
* the lack of net neutrality
* lack of competition in the the PC component industry which is the backbone of cheap VPSes and hosting services
* browser monopoly, as any monopolistic browser could impose their small-web-unfriendly version of the web