I think it’s pretty safe to say that the majority of us are here to avoid another corporate takeover of our preferred platforms. It would seem to me to be a tad irresponsible to allow Facebook into our space with open arms, allowing them to hoover up our data. I would love to keep using Lemmy.world, but will happily change instances if need be, and I feel many share that sentiment.
So my understanding is that the way Federation works in the activity pub standard is that information is not cached on a server unless it interacts with another piece of content. It’s basically a web of users, and one user cannot reach far on that web. That would mean the easiest way to collect mass amounts of data is to sicc their users over here by the millions.
Although if my understanding is incorrect, I would be happy for someone to educate me.
No, they don’t even need an instance, all of the data is public and freely accessible.