How much though? I mean we have usernames yes there’s that, but can the federal agencies simply request that an instance turn over all signup data for all users and accounts? That might be an argument to avoid using US-based instances (though those mostly use Mbin or PieFed rather than Lemmy).

Or Lemmy is notoriously leaky itself - couldn’t someone simply put a thumbnail that pings a server owned by those agencies, and thereby get IP data directly? (or if not a thumbnail then a link to some website, like maybe supposedly a wordpress software or something, which functions yet also feeds IPs too) They could even spin up their own instance and watch all voting and posting traffic coming in as well, which in correlation to the IP addresses could tie down a user account. I guess a proxy would solve this particular issue. iirc there is all kinds of traffic from all kinds of servers whenever you visit every single Lemmy page, so simply putting out a post seems like it would be enough to get data from anyone that even so much as views it in their feed?

Another one relates to that time that Lemmy.World put out a user survey based on Google - anyone that responded would thereby tie a Google account to using Lemmy.

Sorry, I am all questions here and no answers, but this is going to be life & death & livelihood to so many people - splitting families apart all over again (I am referring to the previous border incidents, where e.g. babies were ripped from their mothers’ arms, some of which never did get reconnected even multiple years later).