More often than not, the best way to hide is to simply blend in with the crowds – this also encompasses one’s choice for a username. It is relatively simple to make a single throwaway account – just come up with a username, and off you go – however, if one makes throwaway accounts often, the task of thinking of a unique, and non-identifiable username can become a challenge. I would argue that poeple would often resort to using a pattern employing small changes for all subsequent usernames. Such patterns can be identified to a specific user if all users have their own unique patterns.
How can one reliably generate many unique-but-normal, and non-pattern-identifiable usernames?
I don’t think ActivityPub puts many restrictions on usernames (no @ and a server defined length limit, I believe?). At some point Lemmy even allowed setting an invisible character as the display name! You can vary the length as well if you host the service.
However, what you’re looking at isn’t my username, but my display name. This is separate from your normal username and most Lemmy frontend use that if available.
You can set it in your profile settings, and change it later if you like!
Boost doesn’t seem to support display names other than on the profile page. It does, however, tell me that your account was created 6th of june 1923 :p