Do I trust that vanilla Lemmy code doesn’t contain something nefarious, such as code that detects political positions it doesn’t like and reduces their visibility? Sure. It would be hard to hide something like that.
Do I trust that major servers aren’t secretly running software that manipulates content? Mostly yes. I think it would get noticed since there are lots of vanilla servers to compare behavior to.
Do I trust that all the software is well-designed and bug-free? I write software for a living. No software is bug-free and most of it isn’t well-designed.
Do I trust that everyone who runs a fediverse server isn’t an asshole? Absolutely not. Any jackass can run a server. I run a Mastodon server (on which all users are me).
They can be my really close friends or family and ask me for an account, which I would actively discourage (join something well-run like .world) but eventually allow if they really wanted to.
How are "We" to place trust in the fediverse?
I came here for the same reasons as most of you and chiefly among them was to escape the corporate embrace of common social media platforms....