https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2017/07/do-trees-poop/
I started quoting relevant parts but there's so many different ways they get rid of waste that it got silly.
In a nutshell (lol): sap, leaves, petals, fruit, dead wood inside the tree, and root excretions are all kind of tree poop in their own ways.
They've always existed in some way or another though.
Which pub you went to, which newspaper you read, which TV channel you watched, they all created echo chambers and bubbles in the past.
At least with the Fediverse we're more likely to break out of it due to various instances showing up in our feeds. Various viewpoints being visible. The Fediverse is still in it's early days so it's still a bit monoculture with the likes of Linux and anti-capitalism but that's changing now. We're seeing more and more different takes on different topics as time goes by.
That asterisk is a problem though, having to go through and make it secure is an issue. What if you miss a setting? What if you misunderstand a setting? None of it is particularly upfront and easy. It doesn't ask you when you first install it to set this stuff up, it encourages you to just get stuck in and start using it straight away.
It's not too complicated for a nerd whose hobby is computers or someone who has studied computers, but for the layperson it's too much.
That's why Librewolf is so good. It's secure by default, with all the settings toggled to privacy and you can ease that off if you wish, for convenience or whatever.
Firefox essentially can't seem to decide if they want to be FOSS or capitalist, that's an issue.