Someone is going to at some point. Whoever it is might do it behind-the-scenes if they are risk-averse.
Think of what the granular user data is worth on an instance that big.
Want to buy user data? If reddit tells you no that’s that, but in the fediverse you can go and ask the next largest instance if the first one says no. The game theory is a little more complex here in the fediverse.
When it does happen, I hope the backlash will be appropriately large. I don’t think any of the key stakeholders here want to see a normalization of lemmy being monetized in this way - through donations sure, but not by selling the users’ attention and privacy to 3rd parties.
Someone is going to at some point. Whoever it is might do it behind-the-scenes if they are risk-averse.
Think of what the granular user data is worth on an instance that big.
Want to buy user data? If reddit tells you no that’s that, but in the fediverse you can go and ask the next largest instance if the first one says no. The game theory is a little more complex here in the fediverse.
When it does happen, I hope the backlash will be appropriately large. I don’t think any of the key stakeholders here want to see a normalization of lemmy being monetized in this way - through donations sure, but not by selling the users’ attention and privacy to 3rd parties.
Those that even remotely consider scraping data on Mastodon consistently face intense harassment and criticism.
Those who talk about it do. I’m sure many already scrape without going around telling the world about it.
Can’t you just scrape everything without ever saying a word to the admins though?
Right, that’s what I mean.
Or presumably you could even just run your own instance and federate to fetch info “legitimately.”