I've been on Lemmy for some time now and it's time for me to finally understand how Federation works. I have general idea and I have accounts on three federated instances, but I need some details.

Let Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta be four federated instances. I have an account on Alpha and create a post in a community on Beta. A persoson from Gamma comments on it and a person from Delta upvotes the post and the comment.

The question: On which instances are the post, the comment and the upvotes stored?

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[–] drekly@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (7 children)

So if I make an instance, I can scrape all the content and gather data on every user and sell it to Cambridge analytica?

[–] s4if@lemmy.my.id 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Technically, yes. But if you are caught red handed, be ready for the mass ban to your account/instance.

[–] drekly@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

But if it's just sat there silently data gathering, nobody would know?

[–] s4if@lemmy.my.id 3 points 1 year ago

Yup, that is what professional/corporate scrapper do from the very beginning. Fediverse has poor privacy, and it is designet that way. It is better to share only safe content to fediverse for our safety, and share more private things on messaging/chatting apps like matrix or email only to person we trust.

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