Welcome!! I had 4 accounts and around 400k karma between them, yeah I know, I was a loser.

They banned all of mine the same way, vpn didn’t matter. Lemmy is much better, but avoid lemmy.world and lemmy.ml. I still have to Google some things that only reddit has the answer to, but lemmy has great conversations with less bots.

I live in the deep South and don’t want my information out there. Mullvad has done me right for years, I see no reason to change. Many other VPN’s are vulnerable and can leak your information to your ISP.

Only a VPN at around $65-70 per year.