don’t know why instances, mine specifically, choose to block others. Now, don’t get me wrong that blocking instances that are CP related and anything illegal is something that should and needs to be blocked and/or removed. but if its something like Threads, let me choose to block a user myself

I’d suggest looking for another instance or hosting your own - at least you have the choice to do that here. Choose an instance whose policies align with your interests and principles the most

I just feel that some lemmy instances are turning into big tech companies where they are controlling everything, and don’t get me wrong, its their server space, do what you want to do, but at least since you are using foss to run your lemmy server, at least be different then Reddit or YouTube etc. I created a lemmy account just to have a more private experience from Reddit without being tracked all the time. guess I was wrong.

The unpaid volunteers running these servers probably overwhelmingly have no interest at all in tracking any user’s activity, whereas tracking is essentially the business model of actual “big tech” companies like Facebook and Google.

Of course, there is a degree of trust being put into the owner of your instance to not expose or exploit your personal info, which could include your real world location (exposed via IP, or looking at logs to estimate it based on the times you are active), and email address

As a side note, some instances state their policies on log retention on the legal/about page, others have it in the sidebar.