Fellow under an oppressive regime! I signed onto Fediverse entirely through VPN with no issues! Be very careful to not say too much about yourself so they can track you; lie. Lie a lot. When not lying, do not give away any information about yourself.

Mastodon and Lemmy do not restrict users who connect from Tor or a VPN.

Never had a problem on Lemmy or Mastodon with a VPN. If you create a Reddit account through a VPN, though, you will get shadowbanned. I made my Lemmy and Mastodon accounts with a VPN and had zero issues.

Mastodon, Lemmy, Reddit and other social media platforms restrict users who connect through TOR or a VPN

That’s not network-wide, each Lemmy/Mastadon instance can do their own thing in regards to Tor or VPN. Find an instance that allows that or run your own.

Not sure if Reddit changed recently but I just tested logging in/out of an old Reddit account via Tor and it worked fine. But I mostly avoid Reddit nowadays so can’t be sure my posts/comments would work there. Also note their Tor site still works most of the time, you can actually view Reddit that way if you wanted https://old.reddittorjg6rue252oqsxryoxengawnmo46qy4kyii5wtqnwfj4ooad.onion/

(posting this comment via Tor)

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

Only mildly sarcastic, but even if you’re trying to be careful, you reveal a lot about yourself by making comments at all or interacting with a community at all. Your interests, your writing style, your browser footprint, etc. etc. It’s very difficult to not be truly unique if someone out there is purposefully tracking you as an individual. Depending on where the instance is hosted, they may be required to keep server logs and may further be required to divulge those to police for lawful investigations. “Lawful” obviously can vary widely in interpretation, depending on local corruption levels. I know that if I was of interest in an investigation it would not be hard at all to link me to my real identity, and I just sort of live with that.

I’ve been using Lemmy and previously Reddit for years with a VPN without issue.

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.

You can’t use social media anonymously, it will all be pseudonymous aslong as you engage, if you consume social media passively, you can. But their have been reports that passive social media consumption is tied to negative mental health.

It’s a bit like walking through the park every day shouting at people, and not wanting anyone to know who you are. Eventually they’d figure it out.

Checkout https://splintercon.net/ and follow the advice given to political dissidents and journalists.

Depends on how repressive.

Often your main method of staying safe is appearing harmless.

You can find dedicated Mastodon and lemmy hosts more receptive to VPN users.

Anonymous use is hard due to stuff like timing attacks and writing style recognition, etc, especially if you post publicly. You want to mimic another style, for example. And create plausible deniability around timings (like say scheduled posts)

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.

Lemmy doesn’t restrict VPN use. Some instances may

Make your lemmy accounts through lemmy.org because it doesn’t require an email. Use a VPN (lemmy.org is fine with that). Use an anti-fingerprinting browser or TOR and be careful not to add extensions that will make you uniquely identifiable. Maybe check out Mullvad Browser or Librewolf? They both have letter-boxing options that will keep your screen at a standardized resolution so you can’t be fingerprinted easily that way.

Honestly, depending on how oppressive and competent the regime you live under is, it could be too much to do this safely. I don’t know where you’re posting from so I don’t want to give you any false sense that you can do the above options and be free and clear.

EDIT: Also don’t sign into things on your TOR browser that you sign into on other browsers. Keep it as an entirely separate identity.

And don’t have two browsers open on the same site and move your mouse from one to the other. There’s a lot of little things that very driven people can do to find ways to identify you…