I know that as leftists, participating in online communities requires a certain level of discretion. I’m admittedly not as privacy focused as I probably should be, but I would like to at least minimize the chances of being put on someone’s list. Do I need a VPN every time I open this site or do I just need to be careful of what I post?
Apart from if I would post some really messed up things, I don’t consider myself in any less danger here versus in real life, where I am a very active member of a communist party. Posting here is not going to do anything worse for my safety.
This always comes up and I’m staunchly in this camp rather than the super security groups. Besides the basic “don’t doxx yourself” and “don’t admit to crimes” stuff for every online community I don’t think there’s any special harm to participating over here. If people are big enough to be an issue to the authorities, they’ll probably be noticeable enough irl or in other websites too.
But obviously use a VPN always (even out of here), specially if you’re in that one country where corporations are very free in what they can do with your internet usage data. ProtonVPN is partially free and Nord is very cheap.
I am generally in this camp as well; my attitude in my online life pretty closely mirrors that in my real life. People who know me in person know I am an active communist, that even includes some of my bosses, nobody really cares.
I am not going to give out my specific address more than is available in my profile, but I just make it a point to not post anything online that I wouldn’t tell a stranger in person. If I post it online and somebody traces it back to me…I don’t particularly care. Doesn’t mean I want to start getting NAFO death threats, but they also have the attention span of a termite.
If there is something I really cared about keeping private, I just don’t mention it to anybody anywhere.