As I understand it, instances can be hosted by anybody. So, doesn’t it make sense that you should be able to shop around what instance you want to join based on stated beliefs on how the instance and information should be run (de-federation, etc)? Shouldn’t there be some kind of public information to keep them held responsible for instance usage and management? Or is there? Do people just blindly trust whoever wants to host a community?
I literally know nothing of hosts of lemmy.world, I’m sure they are nice people, but they could be literally be Nazis and I wouldn’t know. I’d rather not contribute to another Reddit situation or something worse.
Ultimately does it matter? They can say they do or don’t track you and they can say your data and privacy is safe but you never have a guarantee. It’s no different from when companies promise us xyz but then in the background they’ve been doing shady shit. My best suggestion is to try to make the best educated choice and to accept you made the best choice you could with the information you had at the time.
0 guarantee. Whatever they say, in reality, it may happen otherwise. Best efforts/intentions/etc. Remember the hacks recently? Maybe the hackers could have dumped the databases on those instances and taken everything.
You want more certainty? Host your own instance.