I don’t think they really need to run an instance to conduct surveillance on the Fediverse. Maybe it makes things easier, but a lot of this is public anyway. Just because Google isn’t putting a lot of this in search results yet doesn’t mean it can’t be scraped by people who are interested in scraping it.

His name is Robert Paulson

All together now

I've always considered myself a small enough target that it's unlikely very many people give a shit.

I use NoScript and uBlock. For this page, there are eighteen different scripts that want to run, but I only allow the two that seem necessary for basic functionality.

Apart from using Tor and allowing zero scripts to run, we have little hope of even pseudo-anonymity on the internet, and increasingly in our every-day lives.

We, as a people, tolerate the surveillance state as long as they increase the surveillance incrementally over generations, distract us with shiny toys, and keep us fighting amongst ourselves over irrelevant subjects.

Dear Feds, My name is Walter Hartwell White. I live at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87104. This is my confession. If you're reading this comment, I'm probably dead- murdered by my brother-in-law, Hank Schrader. Hank has been building a meth empire for over a year now, and using me as his chemist. Shortly after my 50th birthday, he asked that I use my chemistry knowledge to cook methamphetamine, which he would then sell using connections that he made through his career with the DEA. I was… astounded. I… I always thought Hank was a very moral man, and I was particularly vulnerable at the time – something he knew and took advantage of. I was reeling from a cancer diagnosis that was poised to bankrupt my family. Hank took me in on a ride-along and showed me just how much money even a small meth operation could make. And I was weak. I didn't want my family to go into financial ruin, so I agreed. Hank had a partner, a businessman named Gustavo Fring. Hank sold me into servitude to this man. And when I tried to quit, Fring threatened my family. I didn't know where to turn. Eventually, Hank and Fring had a falling out. Things escalated. Fring was able to arrange – uh, I guess… I guess you call it a "hit" – on Hank, and failed, but Hank was seriously injured. And I wound up paying his medical bills, which amounted to a little over $177,000. Upon recovery, Hank was bent on revenge. Working with a man named Hector Salamanca, he plotted to kill Fring. The bomb that he used was built by me, and he gave me no option in it. I have often contemplated s-icide, but I'm a coward. I wanted to go to the police, but I was frightened. Hank had risen to become the head of the Albuquerque DEA. To keep me in line, he took my children. For three months, he kept them. My wife had no idea of my criminal activities, and was horrified to learn what I had done. I was in hell. I hated myself for what I had brought upon my family. Recently, I tried once again to quit, and in response, he gave me this. [Walt points to the bruise on his face left by Hank in "Blood Money."] I can't take this anymore. I live in fear every day that Hank will kill me, or worse, hurt my family. All I could think to do was to make this video and hope that the world will finally see this man for what he really is.

As is tradition.

Probably, there are also bots on lemmy already bcz it's grown quite a bit. They are definitely trying to direct the conversation as well.

There are some fedi scrapers.
At least some people on Mastodon really noticed it after they managed to look up their name on chatGPT

At least for a while (dont know the current case) some people bragged about being able to scrape fedi content or something

Dont know it some of the scrapers are gov spies tho

Gonna edit this after finding the saved messages that support my comment, needs probably a while ;.;

Edit: did not find it but searching for "Fediverse Scraper" has at the top two fediverse scraper tools hosted on GitHub, so yea, its easy

I consider Lemmy to be more pseudonymous. Which is to say, I am practically anonymous to most users, but it wouldn’t take much for someone with resources to pester my instance into giving up my IP.

The content of my posts, comments, and votes is intentionally public information.

Im not scared. Ill lay it all out. im Hubert Manne. Thats H-U-B-E-R-T and I live at 1397 Prince Ave, Athens, GA 30606. My ssn is 123-45-6789. Are you bro enough, to come at me?

If you are doing anything that's publicly visible, you're not anonymous.

thank you for the reminder, Robert Paulson.

Dear NSA, I'm the CEO of antifa. Please direct all questions and inquiries below. Thanks.

Will do, Francis Bacon Tumminowson III of Wilburville, Kentucky!