While I am also not very bullish on any fedi-xyz that requires special extra effort from users, I think there's another problem with the current popular schemes

While I am also not very bullish on any fedi-xyz that requires special extra effort from users, I think there's another problem with the current popular schemes that makes your (2&3) solution problematic: money incentives, over time. Even if a company today were to offer "subscribe for no ads", I don't have especially great confidence that it will stay that way, or that the quality of the product will be maintained over time. Fundamentally, if you have a situation where making money is the goal (whether via ads or subscriptions, etc), then that is the goal that will be pursued. But a healthy community is not about money. One way to "keep the money-grubbing company honest", as it were, is to have genuine competition. Maybe there are other good ways, but that's at least one. There needs to be an existential threat to that company, at all times, that its users (and thus revenue) could leave and go somewhere else. A federated approach at least somewhat pushes things in that direction. I'm curious to see how much traction it gains. Maybe there could be a non-profit approach. Or maybe "online community as a public utility" approach; I really don't know. But the money-driven incentive tends to be a slow poison, I think.