Just because the average user doesn’t consider whether they should trust the platform, doesn’t mean the fediverse is less trustworthy. It’s not. Nothing online should be considered trustworthy if it’s not encrypted.

You still have to consider whether Facebook is trustworthy with your posts and click data, whether the thousands of advertisers they sell your info too are trustworthy. Whether the persons you message are trustworthy and that they won’t get hacked.

About the same risks as with trusting a fediverse instance operator except they don’t have the same motivations to sell your data.

I’m not sure if you are aware of fediblock which allows instance operators to coordinate banning and defederating bad actors from the network. And of course you can always mute or block any user or instance you wish independently of your instance’s block list.

Your data being leaked to “malicious servers” in this case also requires approving a follow to a user on that instance or having your profile set to public (and at that point you should expect your content to be public)

I do think you are right that it is a paradigm shift of thinking for new users who aren’t familiar with federation. But I think anyone who wants to join will just either have to give up control to big platforms and stay put or shift their thinking.