So, Manuel Moreale has a post about public email addreses. It's short and sweet. Basically, it doesn't matter how many social profiles you link to in your website's footer; you should also be providing a contact email.
This means you, Dan Luu. I see you with your Patreon, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles but no contact email. What are you afraid of?
But I'm gonna go a bit further. Many personal websites operated by EU citizens like Jens Oliver Meiert provide not only a contact email, but a mailing address and phone number. My understanding is that this isn't required for non-commercial personal websites, but since Jens Oliver Meiert sells books via his website I suppose he's complying with German/Swiss impressum laws voluntarily to avoid misunderstandings.
I've been sharing my physical address and phone number on my website for a few months now, despite being a US citizen residing in the US and thus not subject to German or Swiss law. I do it because, as a homeowner, anybody who wants to find out where I live need only search public records or use one of the many data brokers infesting the US. Basically, it's a bit harder to dox me if I've already doxxed myself. If I'm doxxing myself, it's a bit harder for data brokers to profit from providing data about me.
I have thus far not suffered for having done so. I've received no threatening phone calls. Nobody has sent me death threats by postal mail or email. As far as I know, nobody has mailed me a bomb or anthrax. Not even their Stomp 442 album, let alone classics like Among the Living or Persistence of Time.
Yes, that was a silly joke. No, I'm not at all sorry for having made it. I've been holding it in for over twenty years.
Seriously, though, I have not suffered any adverse consequences for publishing my mailing address. Admittedly, I'm probably temping fate by having said so. However, it could be because I present as a white man, or because my opinions just aren't that spicy, or because most internet brownshirts don't seem to realize that there's a whole internet outside of the social media platforms they haunt.
Incidentally, I'd like to make something clear lest people think I'm trivializing valid personal security concerns: If you're a more harshly marginalized person than I am, you should not emulate my approach. My threat model is not the same as yours.
You should not feel obligated to compromise your safety on the basis of my opinions.
There is a point to all of this. Because I publish my mailing address, anybody who wants to give me money can do so without having to deal with any of the middlemen that have sprung up in the online payments space. You don't have to deal with PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle. You don't have to put up with Cash App or get spammed for ten thousand years by the likes of GoFundMe, Patreon, Ko-Fi, or BuyMeACoffee just because you wanted to give me a fiver.
It doesn't even matter why you'd want to give me money. Maybe something I wrote was just what you needed in a bad time. Maybe something I wrote made you laugh. Maybe you downloaded a bootleg copy of one of my novels and wanted to pay for it. You can just go down to your local post office, buy a money order and a stamp, and mail it to me. Or mail me a check if you still use those. Ideally with a short letter, but that's up to you. I can then deposit that check or money order in a separate account, keep a record of the deposit, and comply with the relevant reporting requirements and pay the appropriate taxes — none of which is your problem.
Maybe we could solve the whole "how do we support creators on the internet?" problem without more tech or advertising if we didn't all feel we had to be so paranoid about assholes finding out where we actually live because we wrote or said something they find so disagreeable that we've become the antichrist to them. Then again, services like Rapid Remailer still exist.
What doesn't exist is a way for creators to provide a physical address to a trustworthy proxy with an alias that they can publish. Would-be supporters could then mail checks or money orders (with or without letters) to this proxy mailer, specifying the intended alias, for the proxy mailer to pass on. While website operators could rent a box at their local post office, that's expensive and requires regular trips to the post office to collect mail.
Of course, I have no idea if such a service is even a viable business model. It might not be for a number of reasons. For example, the proxy might not be trustworthy after all; it might leak data or sell information about who mails what to whom to any corporation or government willing to pay for such data.
See what I mean about the necessity of paranoia? While I agree with Manuel Moreale about sharing a contact email on your website, I can understand why many are reluctant.
However, if you're instead sharing your Twitter or Mastodon profile, that tells me that you only want to hear from people who drink the social media Koolaid. Either that, or you only want to hear from people who have bought into whatever groupthink is prevalent in your circles on those platforms. Either way, if I can't email you then you don't matter to me. Just as you don't matter to me if your internet presence is limited to a social media account, Medium, or Substack.
Instead of drinking all that corporate Flavor-Aid, try drinking some plain ice water, instead. It won't kill you unless you're drinking tapwater in Chernobyl or Flint, MI.