Is there a way to hide all of the random stuff on the sidebar? I find it very distracting, and so far not a single thing has been to my interests. I'd prefer to just not see it. I searched around for a setting, and I did a search on Google and DuckDuckGo but found nothing useful.
#fedia
The whole line of thinking where we don't need to bother with defederating because your data can still end up over on Threads is not entirely correct. Yes, you can still grab data via RSS, yes you can still scrape data, but from an AP standpoint Threads users will not see or be able to interact with your content if you are on server that does not federate with Meta, and that is key. If the threads app can't see your data, and users there cannot follow or interact with your posts, then Meta cannot gather intelligence on you in relation to their users, which is completely different than scraping your data and viewing it in a vacuum. Your content is more valuable to Meta in relation to the content of their users and how they interact with you.
Yes, you can learn a bit about someone by observing them from a distance, but you learn so much more if you are interacting with them directly.