I want to set up a lemmy instance as a subreddit alternative for a community I moderate. I would be running the instance on a local machine in my home so I really want to make sure that it can’t be traced to my physical location.

I already subscribe to ExpressVPN for general use, can I just install it on the local machine, press connect, and boom be anonymous? What impact would this have on users?

  • homelabber
    2·
    1 year ago

    If I’m not mistaken to make your instance available to other people you’d have to set up a reverse proxy. And a correctly set up reverse proxy shouldn’t reveal your IP, only the local IP (127.0.0.1).

    I might be wrong, so ask on the !selfhosted@lemmy.world, since it’s more active than this community.

    However renting a VPS and hosting your Lemmy instance there is probably a better idea if you plan on creating a community, since it will minimize risks (DMCA notices, bugs in the Lemmy source code that could expose your server, etc). And it would make scaling easier if your instance grows.