Question: Anonymity improvement through the operation of a self-hosted bridge?

Introduction

My understanding of Tor is that the biggest anonymity risk with Tor is the accumulation of multiple dishonest Tor relays, so that your entire network path is exposed by one attacker or by multiple attackers with aggregated data.

Question

Would it be wise to run your own self-hosted bridge relay to take advantage of always connecting to a trusted relay?

Follow-Up Question

If I’m right about the idea that a self-hosted Tor bridge improves anonymity guarantees, my follow-up question would be this:

Would it be wiser to use your own bridge exclusively for yourself or would it be better to make the bridge public for other people as well? On the one hand, a private bridge would hide the fact that I’m using the Tor network, but on the other hand, I don’t have the company of other users to blend in. What would be the best thoughts if my first assumption is correct?

I know Whonix isn’t Tor directly, but I assumed I would have the most success in this forum because of the privacy-focused community. Where do you think this question can be answered?

Isn’t a self-hosted bridge like a guard relay that is even more fixed than the current guard rotation? It would be nice to know that at least one part of the circuit is honest.

These are complex research questions.

https://www.freehaven.net/anonbib/

See also content on torproject.org (blog, mailing list, …) related to Tor entry guards.

If anywhere Tor Support otherwise only through academic research.

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