Reddit was the same way, just now the operators are community members instead of corporations. Am I missing something? I don’t get the fear of this if it was okay when reddit did it.

I run the server https://discuss.online. There is a method to purge data. There is a small but very loud group of people talking down Lemmy. They get very angry if you ask them for evidence.

See: https://pepple.us/@brian/110561496252973593