- Use distributed, federated services like Lemmy, mastodon etc.
- Support the hosts with our own funds.
- Moderate our own communities.
The second point is the most important. Reddit happened because they are a corporate entity seeking profit. Let’s own our social media platforms by actively contributing funds to them.
For lemmy.world, they are using their previous setup used for mastodon.world: https://opencollective.com/mastodonworld
As for how you can be sure, it is hard to tell, it really depends on each instance. Even in the case of lemmy.world, while you have some details on the expenses and revenues, it’s not at the level of a company audit. But that was enough for me to donate. At some point there will always be a trust element.