Hm. As long as you only interact with Lemmy through a (trusted) VPN, or even through Tor, you’re just as safe using Lemmy as you would be any other website. Servers can always see your IP by default, and the owners of those servers can be coerced to give it away by whatever external forces. If you hide your IP, they can’t. That’s pretty much it.
“Version” is definitely used commonly to describe two different … versions of the same thing, without implying that one is better than the other or supercedes it. There are two versions of the PS5, one with and one without a disk drive. There are many different versions of Windows, like Home or Enterprise. You can get hardcover or paperback versions of many books. Etc. Etc.