“we believe that the #mastodon application is safe to use, **and as long as you have registered your account in a trusted server**, there are minimal privacy breach risks” https://www.privado.ai/post/who-actually-holds-your-data-in-mastodon-a-privacy-review
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grin
A new user wouldn't be able to say who to trust. The "wisdom of the masses" may be very misleading. There are many guides trying to help picking an instance; in one hand there are too many, and on the other many of them are slightly (or not so slightly) biased. And many of them neglect to mention real risks (like servers with too many users and too few admins, or instances with seemingly correct rules but not following them).