Let’s say I live under an oppressive regime (don’t we all?) How can I use social media anonymously, so I don’t face reprisals from the government?
Mastodon, Lemmy, Reddit and other social media platforms restrict users who connect through TOR or a VPN.
Is there any way I can create an account on these services and use them anonymously?
Thanks in advance for any information and advice you can provide.
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This guide is pretty good -> https://ssd.eff.org/playlist/journalist-move
Avoid the internet altogether with Meshtastic or Recticulum if your goal is coordination amongst a closed group.
Good luck stay safe.
You can’t.
Social media is public, period.
If you want private social interactions then use end-to-end encrypted communication services.
Any oppressive regime will have multiple tools that can identify your access to social media services and determine who the human is behind the keyboard. Assume that everything you post on public social media has your real life name and address attached to it.
Unless you’re an expert and taking extreme measures (and you wouldn’t be asking this question if you were such an expert) then anonymous access to online services with respect to a sovereign power with an intelligence service is impossible.
If you live in an oppresive regime, there isn’t any posibility to use anonymously an social media, there the only possibility is using a P2P communication system, eg. https://securebit.chat/ or similar. All other, like Lemmy or other from the fediverse are traceable, even with VPN or even not accessible in such regimes with heavy controled servers.
yeah, tbh if you want anonymity, stay off the internet. even P2P has its risks.
Correct, but P2P and Steganography are the only valid resources for eg.Periodists in oppressive countries. In western world all this isn’t really needed, there are enough some basics and common sense to protect sensitive data. I don’t think that any of the Lemmies here are from North Corea, because people there can’t even access other than the own state social network or even use other than the goverment server and ISP.
100% privacy don’t exist in the moment you go online, you can only patch the biggest holes, protecting somewhat against the surveillance of companies, but not against goverments when you are in a criminal investigation, irrelevant what you do, you cant avoid to be targeted if you act against the law, the more than 3000 criminal websites seized by the authorities in the Onion show what are the possibility they have in the web when needed.
If you don’t post suspicious or radical content, even in oppressive regimes there are no problems. This also means that in these regimes using encrypted messages can be suspicious and a very close look from the authorities. In these regimes, then, it is often used to exchange problematic messages through steganography, that is, to hide these messages in innocent images, texts or music that do not arouse suspicion. Some OpenSource apps and services:
- https://stegoshare.sourceforge.net/
- https://www.openstego.com/
- https://steghide.sourceforge.net/
- https://stegcloak.surge.sh/
etc…
There are always manners to show the middle finger to these regimes
Checkout https://splintercon.net/ and follow the advice given to political dissidents and journalists.
No, you can’t participate in the yelling out your thoughts at max volume system privately.
Social media is public. What you post or reply to is public. Even unexpected metadata about your interactions is public.
You can’t use social media without being social and sociality is by definition not anonymous. Anonymity is antisocial.
You can’t stick your hand in the hand grinding machine safely. It’s meant to grind hands that are stuck in it.
If you’re scared, go to church.
Lemmy doesn’t restrict VPN use. Some instances may
Fair enough. I only tried lemmy.world. I will try .org and .zip to see if they work through TOR. That still leaves Reddit (unfortunately some communities I like are concentrated over there).
