Remember that lemmy is not one monolithic structure. User experience will vary from instance to instance. If your instance or an instance you’re visiting is blocking you when on vpn, it’s that instance’s admins who decided to do that. It would be better to ask in their support or meta community.
If it’s your own home instance and you believe what they’re doing is anti-privacy, then they do not align with your values and you should consider moving to another instance that does.
Take the comment you replied to with a grain of salt. IOS and Android are not rolling release unless you use their beta versions, so the analogy is not correct. Ubuntu and its derivatives have slower release cycles in order to ensure they’re stable. But it doesn’t mean packages are “stale”. A rolling release distro will give you bleeding edge updates at the risk of something breaking once in a while. If you work on stuff like music production, you absolutely will be better off with a more stable distro.
That’s really dependent on how your work manages user workstations. If your employer is big enough to have managed endpoints, you’ll need to convince your IT department, not just your boss. They’ll have to be able to officially support it (compatibility, updates, security, legal, etc.) and that also requires approval from higher ups.