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.
Sounds like your friend just shouldn’t post it if they’re so worried.
Pick one
Want people to see get the message they’re trying to convey. They are not seeking notoriety, just to get people to think about some things.
They’re not exclusive. Newspapers used to publish anonymous op-eds. Freenet (or whatever it’s evolved into) is entirely anonymous publishing. They’re not mutually exclusive goals.
I’m just seeing if people have interesting suggestions beyond creating a Lemmy account and posting to c/politics. Or if there are ways to do so, but them get more visibility of the post in mainstream social media.
I tried to be clear: my friend isn’t concerned about law enforcement; they’re concerned someone at their company (or some future hirer) will see what they’ve posted and that it was them that posted it, and make a decision that will affect their career.
Anything you say about politics online could affect your career; all it takes is someone in a decision-making position to decide they disagree with your political views.
You’ll never get anonymity in any sufficiently large platform. A few dozen people might see it on Lemmy. If their ideas are so big / important then they’ll have to at least use a pseudonym.