All the old discussions are gone and the users with them. Are we all that stupid that we've all moved on to Facebook and Instagram so we can be better monitored by NSA, or am I missing something here?
Well I agree with the overall sentiment of your post, I want to point out that Lemmy, being federated and open, is even easier to monitor for the NSA and other such people. They don't even need a warrant. They just need to subscribe to the activity pub feed
It's better for privacy in that the platforms themselves collect only the information necessary for interactions to work, but 'worse' in that the information must be available openly.
Apps like Facebook and Tiktok request permissions to collect any data they can get their hands on, including sensors on your phone you might not have known about and extensive fingerprinting across the web browser. But they keep that data to use, abuse, and sell themselves. A random person on the internet can't access it, but powerful companies and government agencies get to do that instead.
Federated platforms only collect the data needed to function (ex. Upvotes, comments, and the accounts they're attached to), but then that data must be accessible to all instances in order for federation to work.
In my opinion it's still a lot better, but people should know how it works.
If you want to have a private conversation or group on the fediverse, there are separate platforms for those.
I am not sure about this place though some tech communities I have lost interest in because they became less about cool tech and stuff and more about the companies themselves.
Check out some of the communities on slrpnk.net, there's a focus on diy tech and stuff. the technology communities on lemmy.ml, beehaw.org and here have generally cast a wide net on topics.
@Rentlar@lemmy.ca pretty much explained the issue.
Would suggest asking these questions in the dedicated community for selfhosters, who'd be able to point you to specific tools and things you can use to populate your instance with new data from across lemmy !selfhosted@lemmy.world