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?
If you’re interested learning opsec, step 0 is learning to threat model. Figure out what situations you’re trying to prevent, what actors or forces may cause those situations to happen, and what your options are for stopping them, and what the costs of each of those options are. Then you can make an informed decision. Privacy is a gradual adaptation, not a switch you can flip overnight or ever be perfect at. It involves a lot of tradeoffs.