I think that there is no way to tell between legit privacy-conscious folk and bad actors. I am also pissed about it, but from a server’s perspective there is no difference between us and malicious users.
I don’t think the creators themselves can receive money privately either. This also is a privacy risk, and a broader risk of doxing or extortion if they make “undesired” content.
But there is no way to receive money anonymously that it isn’t “technically money laundering”. That’s my 2 cents.
Anything having to do with money is heavily surveilled. And for some good reasons, in my opinion, although this is probably gonna be downvoted.
If you could donate money anonymously, then swarms of bad actors could launder money this way. No good options there, I am afraid.
Perhaps the creators could be more sensitive to this side of things, by offering more private ways to donate money, like cash or prepaid cards.
If your threat model involves all these, then you can only be one person, and he has already been arrested due to stylistics. /joking
BTW your advice to use AI against writing style fingerprinting is not what I have heard, and some people don’t want to use AI, especially OpenAI. You should at least make your remedy about local models, but those are not as good as the commercial ones.
The correct response here is: style guides.
Style guides are specifically designed to make multiple staff writers to all sound the same. There are tools like back-and-forth translation and reading level analyzers that you can use offline to minimize peculiarities in your writing.
But is is all very cumbersome and error prone, and for low threat scenarios just mimicking another person at a lower reading level than yourself is the most accessible method.
That’s why cash in the mail is still an option (with some VPNs for example). No wonder the EU is cracking down on cash payments above a certain limit.
They do require a ton of sensitive data to issue these cards. I don’t know if they are themselves to be trusted. Probably members of the same surveillance network with banks, so this is perhaps more of a placebo effect. The men in black will still know what you do with your money.
Same goes with crypto. So there is no point really. The invasion of our privacy is not a matter of individual consumption choices, but a systemic issue. No matter my privacy beliefs, I choose to do a number of things normally, because doing otherwise can come off as very malicious to banks and other institutions.