Option 2 seems like the optimal idea, on paper, if Option 1 isn’t feasible, but Option 3 doesn’t really bother me, if there’s trouble with Option 2’s implementation. I don’t consider privacy at an IP-tracking level really that much of a concern. This is a social media platform, my privacy is my anonymity.

It sounds like maybe Lemmy itself coupd use some enhancement with regard to how and when it decides to proxy, and what it does when proxying fails. If we can get a better experience by swapping to Option 3, until such enhancements are maybe made in the future, that sounds fair to me.