I'm old school and I made accounts for various social media I think several years ago back before they even had phone verification on a lot of these sites and some of it is just flat out broken unless you attach a phone number to them now and I simply wasn't prepared for how much cancer was involved lol. Just about managed to get it working but these sites really do break without a working phone number.
I wanted to scrub my big tech presence for the most part and just leave my youtube channel there to prevent any potential hostile takeover and clean up the history so everything is more consistent for my alt-tech stuff in the searches. To think as well they're going to make everything even worse now, we're going to have to give safety lectures to the next generations about internet security and what really happens with social media history. Got to think carefully about where you post your stuff because some of them don't even have delete options to at least take your stuff off the sites. We all know the fuckers will likely keep secret backups for the glowies to peruse even if you can delete stuff off the front end.
I think advising people use burner phones for any social media is going to be sound security advice at this point and always post up fake data.
I'm an ex-UKIP member and was fairly active in politics a few years ago during the EU referendum, so it's not just necessarily me being paranoid. Look don't get me wrong, I'm not naïve about Russia being a dictatorship, it's just that's how badly the west treat's political opposition they don't approve of now. On top of that there's the whole recent debanking situation with Nigel Farage which is going to get more common. I'd rather get shot than have to deal with the shit people deal with in the west now.
There are much better places to go.
In Europe consider Serbia or some other non EU countries.
Thailand you can post anything you want, so long as it isn't about the king.
Several island nations that are former British colonies that don't even have the capacity to look at your internet postings. I believe Clease even described them as being more British than Britain.
Don't go to Russia.
you make good points, but I think the issue is that people here don't just want a more free country. they also want to live in a strong, advanced country that they can have national pride in. they wish it were America, or Britain, or wherever they were born in, and failing that they want a country as similar as possible.
Russia is none of those things, and if you are not 100% ethnically Russian you are fucked. One of my friends, who was born in Moscow, grandparents born in Moscow, educated as a doctor in Moscow, and owns property in Moscow has people come up to her on the metro and say "you don't belong here, leave". Why? She has a more olive skin tone due to some distant ancestry.
The only pride Russia has is from the past, and they try hard to go back to it and the days of communism. It's truly frightening if you are an average person with any self awareness.
Historically, Russia goes through cycles of "strong men" and then near total collapse. It will be no different with Putin as he has murdered everyone who could possibly run it and when he eventually goes it will be a mess.
I lived there three years and still have friends and family there. Most of my American friends, Even those who studied Russian their whole lives and actually are sympathetic to the regime left as there is just no way to make a life there. As it is now, I support several Russian friends who are fleeing to avoid the draft.
The reality is very different than what is in your mind. Russia has always been one of the most harsh places to exist in the world and there's a reason life expectancy of men there is so low.