The data you post isn’t more private like other commenters have mentioned.
On the other hand, lemmy and other open source social media platforms won’t collect behavioural data like other privately owned social networks.
Instagram for instance will track exactly how much time you spend looking at each post to determine your interests and predict which ads you are most likely to click on. Others than that they will also run experiments of changing some features and track your engagement with them.
So in essence, they collect more data on stuff that you don’t explicitly share.
To expand on that, even if you didn’t want to take the VC funded money and bootstrap your own business, the deck is stacked against you. If you compete in the same space, a VC funded company can do more marketing, develop the product faster, have more connections to important business partners because of large amount of money and connections they have.
And they will “outcompete” you at a loss, until the bootstrapped business goes under or settles for a tiny market share in a niche. So when they say, the economy is rigged, this is what they mean. You will need large amounts of capital to compete in the tech space. Even if you are two times smarter and work two times harder, you will never be able to compete with a VC funded company flushed with money in the same space unless you get reaaaally lucky.