@justjustin I do have my own instance and am staying on it.
The point is, that if I'm posting with a "public" setting, it will go to every instance that has at least 1 account that follows me.
Just because I run my own instance, doesn't mean my posts are automatically private. It just means that nobody else can make an account here unless I allow it. It still works like every other Mastodon instance.
I'd have to set my posts to "followers only" for them to be "private".