They're private in the sense that there isn't a corporation stealing your data without your knowledge, selling it without your consent, whoring you out for ads against your will, and/or making your experience shittier to manipulate you into buying their paid features. These alternatives offer a much more pure experience for the typical user. Things like comment and vote history being public is just a part of the design of the forum, they're not tools to farm your data.

[–] iegod@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Is that true though? Any given instance could be running their own data collection.

[–] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

A corporation can still be "stealing" your data without your knowledge if info is public, it's called Scraping

[–] itsJoelle@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Things like comment and vote history being public is just a part of the design of the forum,

Or, to check my understanding, make the structure of the Frediverse actually work, right?

[–] Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Lemmy is basically just a decentralized clone of reddit. A public profile containing comments, posts, upvotes, and the like are considered an integral part of the Reddit experience. I personally don't like it as a feature, but that's why it exists.