Slop.

I'm going to do my best to give a good-faith answer to why TOR isn't the answer it seems to be. Leftists should understand the limitations of the technology we use so we can properly adjust our own personal security postures.

Content moderation is difficult to impossible with TOR

A TOR instance would be very difficult (if not impossible) to moderate while keeping its users safe. By design you can't block a troll by IP; 4chan runs into this problem constantly. If you force users to register with email then all security will be compromised for both the user and server when it sends out emails over the clearnet, to say nothing if the server is compromised. AFAIK no email provider will accept an email sent through TOR.

Even if the Onion instance(s) didn't care about moderation (like the original ranter wants), other instances will care about the griefing and spam, driving them to defederate with the Onion instance(s).

Old members of ~~chapo.chat~~ Hexbear will remember several attempts to flood this site with all kinds of trash, or the great purge of transphobes. Content moderation is the key to keeping us from becoming another cesspool or falling offline. Ironically the *chans have similar moderation for the exact same reason.

Technological security can be undermined shockingly easily with one mistake

For the sake of argument, and to steelman your position, lets pretend the above are solved. One huge danger of technological security is it gives many a false sense of their own security. Look at the recent Young Republican leaks, or really any leak from far right types. All of Signalgate was because a journalist was accidentally invited into the chat. Basic social engineering often gets the goods.

Most busts of by the feds are human factors, like a lapse in security or reusing an email. Powers-that-be can also find and go after the admins, which can compromise the site no matter the technological security. The Feds cracked LulzSec by a slip-up from Sabu and from there dismantled the whole group from the inside.

Backtrace Security had found his identity through an IRC chatlog in which Sabu accidentally posted a link to his personal website.

The breadth of the raids on LulzSec suspects and hardware across the world should give everybody pause from a security standpoint.

I haven't even covered securing the server from hackers.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, Lemmy is designed to get us out from under Corporate control, just like phpbb forums back in the day. Being a Person of Interest by nation-states is a completely different beast. Everybody should read Diary of a Person of Interest to see just how much power the Five Eyes can put on you.

I hate being the debbie-downer. I do wish we could build more secure software to protect people, but I want to keep people safe by giving a realistic view of the technological limitations. With the limitations in mind people can adjust their own security posture to mitigate the issues above for themselves.