A friend of mine would like to post an op-ed style political essay about the current turmoil in the Democratic Party about Biden’s fitness. They are concerned about it affecting their career, should it be linked back to them; the US is highly divided and they know some of their peers are Republicans, and they’re not sure about the affiliations of people in their upward chain of command. My friend is concerned that posting an emotional opinion piece might – if attributed to them and seen – negatively affect their career. They want to stay anonynmous.

I think getting something posted anonymously in Lemmy would be fairly easy; no-one is going to trying legally coercing an email out of a Lemmy instance over an op-ed. And getting a boost in Mastodon would be simple. I was hoping that there’d be something like WriteFreely where they could post, but anonymity appears to be not even a consideration by the main developers.

And then there’s the question of how to get links to the essay out of the Fediverse, where 90% of the people are. I don’t have a Xitter account anymore, and have never had a Facebook account.

What suggestions does Lemmy have? How, in today’s world, does someone anonymously post content?

Subscript: I do not mean political anonymity – not in the way that protection from law enforcement is needed. My friend lives in the US where freedom of speech is still more-or-less ensured, and the content is not illegal, incidiary, inciting, or even unusual. However, they want anonymity sufficient to guard against data miners, correlators, and brokers. They need to get something off their chest, express an opinion, but not at a risk to their career.

  • Vanth@reddthat.comEnglish
    10·
    4 months ago

    Create an email address from scratch using a non-google email provider you’ve never used before, do not tie it to any of your existing addresses or profiles. Use the new email to create a profile on any blogging platform. Only ever use that email for that one blogging profile.

    I think it’s simple if your presentation is accurate. Put it in a silo and don’t cross it over with anything else. You don’t have to make it hold up to an FBI investigation that will be sending a warrant to the blogging service to get your identity.

    I would bet a dollar that in most cases like this, the person is the weak link in their own privacy. They share their essay with someone they know, boom, privacy gone.