https://join.piefed.social/try/ says they are hosted in Europe. I assume they are using Cloudflare only for DDos-protection?

For a lot of people it’s not even “going back”. They are either to young to have experienced the old web or did but bounced of it. There is a sizeable group of people out there, who went online for the first time not despite facebooks privacy invasive profile building but because of it.

Lemmys default web UI doesn’t have a endlessly loading newsfeed. That’s a intentional design decision to help users spend less time on the platform. Because spending to much time on social media is bad for your mental health. So having friction points is a good thing.

Except the competition doesn’t do that. So what is your average social media addict to do when they hit a friction point? They won’t close the browser. Instead they will go back to the commercial platforms.

Some people like junk food. But creating addictive social media yourself isn’t a good option either

https://www.sovereign.tech/

Apparently: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rétention_de_sûreté_en_France

In French criminal law, “rétention de sûreté” is a procedure for placing prisoners who have served their sentence, but who present a very high risk of reoffending because they generally suffer from a serious personality disorder, in a socio-medico-judicial security center. This measure is limited to convictions for the most serious crimes, in particular sex crimes, and must be expressly provided for in the sentencing decision

Translated with DeepL

I couldn’t find an English source, even the English wiki article on preventive detention doesn’t list France.

20 years is the maximum sentence in France