Actually, the solution described here is exactly what I had in mind. I believe he calls it "a shallow web of trust"?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ipfs/comments/qijq8r/comment/himxu5e/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Advantages (quote):

- There's no subreddit ownership, so they can't be bought or sold.

- There's no censorship apart from what users implicitly opt in to.

- There's no clique of old mods imposing their will on new users for eternity, instead there's contributors who are currently trusted by some segment of the current user base, and these change over time.

- Downvotes carry a reputation risk - moderation abuse is public and controversial moderation decisions will cause trust in that moderator to be lost.

- Echo chambers can only form around those who really want to be in an echo chamber, they don't get to force the rest of us to live in their petty little filter bubble.