this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024

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Anonymous op-ed posting? (midwest.social)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Post it on their behalf with no credit?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

This was my thought as well. OP already knows about it and has an account set up.

How bad can this thing be where the author's work would go through the effort to chase it back to them if it's just an opinion piece?

If they are a government employee and leaking info, that's one thing, but then it isn't really an opinion piece.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Considered, still an option.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

What’s the catch?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Use Tor for everything. Search for "disposable email", find a service that you can use in Tor. Sign up through Tor using that disposable email address for any service that you want to post to. Be aware that some services try to deny access to Tor and/or disposable email addresses. Try a different service or a different disposable email provider if you encounter that.

You should define your threat model. Longer essays can probably be deanonymized with stylometry. The above will probably work fine up to maybe the NSA taking an interest in the origins of the essay. You can probably post something to the Fediverse and reputation-wash it to a larger audience by saying "look at this link that i have no affiliation with", but it's more likely that someone would figure out that it's you. You can use the Tor method to post on Reddit, but many subreddits will have automods that delete posts from new/low karma users.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

I'm not worried about that kind of security. Like I said, this isn't about forensics. The hosting service is probably going to have an email address. My friend simply doesn't want people at their company to be able to obviously associate the article with them.

They're not QAnon. They're not advocating overthrowing the government. They just don't want some conservative higher up in their org sabotaging their chances of promotion.

I think there biggest fear is the harvester companies who build profiles of people. My friend doesn't want this essay showing up in their profile if a decision-maker chooses to pay for a profile, and happens to be a conservative.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

As far as I know Lemmy doesn't even want an Email address on sign up... So there's that. The IP address is gonna end up in some server logs, so they should probably have someone else post it on their behalf. Or use a VPN or a free wifi that doesn't keep logs.

I wouldn't be super worried if it's just an opinion piece blog article about politics. But I can't assess the situation. It might be better to not tie it to you if you teach small children or something. And their parents might complain. I wouldn't expect such people to find out though. You need like a court case to get an ISP to tell you who is behind some IP or other address. Or be a good hacker. Or befriend some corrupt cops. But that's all very unlikely.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yah, agreed. It isn't that kind of post.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Hmmh, I'm still not sure what they're trying to do. Generally speaking, something like a VPN will give some anonymity. Not total, I mean they also regularly catch some criminals, whistleblowers etc. But the tools need to fit the use-case. If it's super important, leak it to some investigative journalist with some good reputation. And they'll take care.

If doing it oneself, most important thing is not to re-use things that could be traced back. Use a different internet connection just for this, make all new accounts and new email addresses and don't use them after that for anything else. There are live Linux distributions like Tails which will be a blank slate and not have any cookies or stuff from your other accounts stored on them.

There are different levels and possible tradeoffs. Not using your internet connection and creating a new blog account somewhere might be enough.

I don't see any good way to reach lots of people over social media... They can send it to someone, anonymously, and hope they re-post it. But there is no way to use own accounts or friends' accounts with already existing followers. At least not without compromising anonymity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

They want to post a political opinion piece, online, reaching as many viewers as possible, without attribution.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like your friend just shouldn't post it if they're so worried.

want eyes on their writing

Ensure untraceable anonymity

Pick one

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

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.