One solution might be a "federated reddit". Hacker News is essentially just a subreddit run by YC, so getting people/organizations/interest groups to run their

One solution might be a "federated reddit". Hacker News is essentially just a subreddit run by YC, so getting people/organizations/interest groups to run their own reddit forums is probably a good idea. It would let each community figure out its own income stream and not worry about advertisers running wild or the entire thing being bought out by the Chinese.