I mean all my shit is routed via Tor. Sooooo. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Im also not exclusively running a private node.
Discussion
But I do agree about the metadata list of all the people you pay and have been payed by is deff not privacy friendly.
I think clients are implementing "private zaps" which are basically anonymous tips that still add to the zaps counter.
You still can't controls the fact that other people might send you public zaps. Maybe that will change in the future and there will be a mechanism to block non-private zaps.
Your node pubkey only needs to be associated once with your clearnet IP for that protection to go away so it's definitely not bulletproof.
I think of Zaps like a small transactional account. It doesn’t need to be tied to any private financial infrastructure.
It’s just a petty cash account that sometimes goes up and sometimes goes down. May need a top up or withdrawal from time to time.
Maybe if we see more serious transfers with significant amounts, we may need better self-managed approaches to minimise risk/trust.
That's entirely fair that you choose to take it that way and I can see you understand the tradeoffs.
Overall I just want the tradeoffs to be clear to newcomers so that they don't think LN has magical perfect privacy and anonymity or that custodial LN is actually bitcoin.