I think lemmy should do what Lichess.org does, which is: Give an icon to donators/patrons. That is all, just an icon. It is surprisingly effective. For example, see this: https://lichess.org/@/thibault. The wing, before his username is the icon to which I am referring. it is visible site-wide.
I think education is still the missing link. We need to teach people fallacies, biases and some statistics.