@christian
1) Embed is a great example. Apps can even implement this menu item without it being a standard feature of the Fediverse. So I embed someone else’s content on my blog post. Can I say I did this with consent? That they should have expected it? In my reasoning is it still isn’t consent if I haven’t asked for their permission. I could argue they should have expected it as a possibility, but I don’t have their explicit consent to publish their post within my decided context. Could of course still be legal or within publishing rights.
2) Also a good example about fediblocks. What is reasonable for people to expect if they hear they learn that they can block and defederate? In this case it makes sense for people to expect to be able to feel safe form the other party seeing their posts when they block. The fact that they truly aren’t safe from others viewing their posts via a web browser doesn’t mean they have consented to repurposing of their content.
The person implementing the web scraper likely understands that people intentfully block others, but decides to disregard this circumstance. Again, the tech allows it and a lot of people understand it works this way, but not everyone. Is that enough to decide that everyone has consented? My reflection: Not if there is a chance some people would say no if asked.
The other scenario is where public timelines on an instance are not in fact displayed publicly, but that’s more clear-cut. Then you actually do need to ”infiltrate” through a covert follow bot that collects posts.
Instances can also be set to not allow indexing, which of course is one of the standard practices you mention in your first post. Best case that is then describes in the instance rules, but still doesn’t protect. In that case I agree 100% with you, that when those signals are ignored, it is also more clear-cut abuse.
I guess to sum up, my stance is that I see very few cases where it doesn’t make sense to ask for permission, to confirm informed consent.