I would assume that all data possible is gathered and stored somehow. For all intents and purposes, this is a public forum. Specific instances might deal with data in different ways, but the nature of federation is that your data is passed around and viewable by others.
It’s far less dangerous than using Threads
As long as they don’t ask for your phone number, ID and you don’t expose yourself. You’ll be fine.
Yea fuck zuck, but i still want to know
the issue put bluntly, is that in federation, your data cannot be 100% safe. even if this instance is secure and perfectly private, if this instance is then federated, that federated data can then be copied and have anything done with it, or to it.
or, to phrase it in a way that opened my eyes to this, quoting from someone else a month ago, “what makes you think you’re in control of your data on any instance?”
The data that you entered into lemmy is stored: username, password, email (optionally), posts, comments, etc. Assume instances keep logs of all the API requests they get from any given IP. This is the case with nearly every website.
If you don’t provide email and lurk then I don’t see much of a concern. You can always use a VPN if you want more anonymity.
