New to fediverse. Joined mostly because reddit has been annoying me for a while for it's algorithm use and general admin stuff. Joining piefed was still a big leap since I have some interest in privacy and security on the internet and joining anonymous server felt a bit suss. Some stranger somewhere would have my email and be able to monitor everything I do and say.
Now, of course reddit does the same and I had no problem (well a little problem) with it. They not only have the data, but they also use it to advertise to me and most definitely sell the data forward. Still, there is a difference on a company with a public leadership whose names are known, and who have to follow laws and mark down their privacy notice publicly. If a server admin gets funny with the data, I'm shit out of luck.
Well I joined so obviously I accepted the trade of but came here to see what others thought. Surprised there was not a discussion about this already.
My personal impression is that people use an email not easily traced to their identity, if they are concerned about that.
You should also be aware, even more than on commercial social media, that what you say and post is essentially public property. Due to the nature of federation it is rather difficult to track down and remove all instances of your content from any and all servers it was federated to, if you wanted to do so.