Yeah, I’ve not had issues accessing my instance with a VPN. But it’s the world we live in. I had a vigorous discussion with someone (it’s in my history), vigorous because I replied to a post aggressively, about the poster blocking VPN clients on their self-hosted blog. Someone quite rightly pointed out that botnets, hackers, and spammers are heavy users of VPNs, and sometimes it’s just easier for a hobby admin to block VPN exit nodes. I’ve come to terms with it; there’s nothing online I need to read so badly that I’m going to compromise my own security for their convenience.

As for privacy, you’re absolutely right. Privacy? In a public forum? A federated public forum?? Pick an instance that doesn’t require an email address to register, or use a throw-away email.

But to answer OP’s question: Reddit is owned by a single group of people with complete admin control over the site. Lemmy has many diverse site owners and admins; there is no Spez.