I feel like the fact that Meta (and anyone) can see posts and users regardless of whether or not they are defederated is a bit of a distraction.
However, I do see the point of considering ways for instances to somehow distance themselves from Meta's instance. If another instance/admin was publicly known to comparably engage in pervasive user tracking (both on and off their own websites) and algorithmic attention monopolization, would we not expect many other actors in the fediverse to defederate or otherwise distance themselves from those practices/that instance? Obviously, several instances have decided to do so by premptively saying they will defederate. I'm just saying that I think it makes sense to at least consider it. E.g., compare the labels the data collected by the Threads Android app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/datasafety?id=com.instagr...) to those of the Mastodon one (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.joinmastod...), and I at least see the contrast.
But perhaps this is just me being naively unaware of rampant community-sanctioned indiscriminate collection of user data in the fediverse (I'm not part of it, just curiously observing Meta's entry).
However, I do see the point of considering ways for instances to somehow distance themselves from Meta's instance. If another instance/admin was publicly known to comparably engage in pervasive user tracking (both on and off their own websites) and algorithmic attention monopolization, would we not expect many other actors in the fediverse to defederate or otherwise distance themselves from those practices/that instance? Obviously, several instances have decided to do so by premptively saying they will defederate. I'm just saying that I think it makes sense to at least consider it. E.g., compare the labels the data collected by the Threads Android app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/datasafety?id=com.instagr...) to those of the Mastodon one (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.joinmastod...), and I at least see the contrast.
But perhaps this is just me being naively unaware of rampant community-sanctioned indiscriminate collection of user data in the fediverse (I'm not part of it, just curiously observing Meta's entry).