Mastodon safe?... I believe we thought (and told ourself) Mastodon is safer in that way of how it did things (it is) but still not curbing usage /educating / replacing of link shared to competition is the eventual fork in the road (as they encroach even more using 'our' users).

If there better alternatives that prefer filtered links like Invidious(?) .. then shout me...(are there providers that defend scraping more officially and says on the site footer or something more proactive no google no scraping or something trying to move away from so easily being collected )