Dropsitenews published a list of websites Facebook uses to train its AI on. Multiple Lemmy instances are on the list as noticed by user BlueAEther
Hexbear is on there too. Also Facebook is very interested in people uploading their massive dongs to lemmynsfw.
Full article here.
Link to the full leaked list download: Meta leaked list pdf
I remember back then, some people defended not blocking Threads instances.
And one of those defenses was “it doesn’t matter if you block Threads, the underlying ActivityPub protocol is open and anyone who wants the data can still receive it.”
Turns out to be the case. It didn’t matter if you blocked Threads.
I think a better reason is the federation only worked one way. Why should we share our content if they’re not sharing theirs? Not that we’d want it.