Sounds like you're in danger of falling for the "just use monero" meme. Your post acts like it is far easier to use monero privately than lightning, but you may not have considered the following difficulties:
- You're supposed to run a monero node (not a phone wallet)
- You're supposed to hide the ip address of your node or wallet by running that software behind tor/i2p/vpns
- You're supposed to avoid reusing monero addresses, or even reusing a monero *wallet*
See these quotes from getmonero.org:
"To prevent the payer from linking your payouts together [you must] generate a new subaddress for each payout. ... If you need perfect unlinkability of your receivables, the only solution remains to use a separate seed (separate Monero wallet)." source: https://docs.getmonero.org/public-address/subaddress/
“It's always advisable, especially for privacy-conscious users, to use a personal node when transacting on the network to achieve the highest rate of privacy.” source: https://www.getmonero.org/get-started/faq/
“Some dangers can be mitigated by using remote nodes on the Tor or I2P networks or using a VPN.” source: https://www.getmonero.org/get-started/faq/
By contrast, you've said you can just post a monero address on stacker news and be protected. But where did you *get* that monero address? Did you set up a node first? Did you just download Cake Wallet and hope their software isn't logging your monero address and mapping it to your IP? Did you turn on tor first? Are you doing anything to avoid address reuse? Are you creating a new wallet for each payment?
Privacy is very hard, and it's a trap to fall into thinking "Oh, as long as I just post a monero address somewhere, my privacy is protected by default." No it isn't.
