@jeffowski whoa, ok, thanks. I'm not a digital native and some of these kinds of particulars are murky to me, so I appreciate the insight.
Presumably, most individual private fedi/masto servers aren't from institutions but I see your point about the potential for access abuse either way. It's why I mostly shy away from clicking ppl's links to their own websites as well, unless they state they don't use trackers, etc.