The feeling is that simply having it be public isn’t an automatic license to re-use or “re-appropriate” the content outside of what’s required for normal network functionality. From that perspective, federating a post to a normal Mastodon / fediverse server = OK, viewing that post in your browser = OK, but many other uses = not OK.

This subset of the userbase want the norm for “extracurricular uses” of people’s posts to be opt-in only, even for public posts. What exactly qualifies as OK/not, I’m not sure, but there’s been discussions about it in the past which you could probably find and read.

I kind of envy the idea in some ways (aggressive requirement of consent), though in the world we currently live in, it does seem unrealistic without a team of lawyers behind it.