I don’t see the creation of any surveillance state here. The data collection, as it exists, is already something that happens (and must happen, as a function that is, by design, both public and federated). Somebody can pull most information used here from a public-facing API; that’s how clients render discussions and how instances automatically communicate with each other.
Basically anybody with a computer could have scraped your (and many other peoples’) data and come to similar conclusions about a wealth of posting, commenting, and voting patterns. I assume that, if anything, an admin doing this responsibly is a sign of a good one and not a malicious one.
I don’t see the creation of any surveillance state here. The data collection, as it exists, is already something that happens (and must happen, as a function that is, by design, both public and federated). Somebody can pull most information used here from a public-facing API; that’s how clients render discussions and how instances automatically communicate with each other.
Basically anybody with a computer could have scraped your (and many other peoples’) data and come to similar conclusions about a wealth of posting, commenting, and voting patterns. I assume that, if anything, an admin doing this responsibly is a sign of a good one and not a malicious one.