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, as the US is highly divided and they knows some of the folks they work with are Republicans, and is not sure about the affiliations of people in their upward chain of command. Divisions shouldn’t and don’t affect careers, but my friend is concerned that posting an emotional opinion piece might cross a line were it linked to them; they want to stay anonynmous.
I think getting something posted more or less anonymously in the Fediverse would be easy; it’s not like anyone is going to bother trying to legally coerce an email out of a Lemmy instance. And I don’t give a shit what my coworkers think, so I can boost the post in Mastodon and such. 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; neither has my friend.
What suggestions does Lemmy have? How, in today’s world, does someone anonymously (I emphasize casual anonymity[^1]) post content?
[^1] not political anonymity. Not in the way that the authorship is going to be pursue by law enforcement; my friend lives in the US where freedom of speech is still more-or-less ensured. However, anonymity sufficient to guard against data miners, correlators, and brokers.
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.