I wouldn’t assume the EU would necessarily be interested in protecting the Fediverse. Legislation like the GDPR is very much oriented towards working with corporate entities and the open Fediverse model is generally at odds with the right to be forgotten (since it’s effectively impossible to ensure all copies of a user’s data are deleted - I don’t even think it’s possible to determine which nodes may have a copy of a year old post).

I think it's a position that often comes from ignorance. Usually these people have no concept that games can involve high quality character and plot writing like Mass Effect, or teamwork focused gaming situations like MMO raids. They either never had any exposure to games or decided early on (usually in adolescence) that games weren't for them.

Ironically there's often a lot of overlap between game haters and people who spend more hours in front of the TV than most of us do gaming.