the most brain-poisonous part of modern social media is that it's ridiculously difficult for posts to be popular without being "viral." a couple generations of sites down the line and maybe we'll be back to a network of blogs, connected but not woven together so tightly it's stressful and drives us all mad
you could make a communications system like this. postsocial media. just do it as simply as possible: a single client/server for each user. a centralized directory. a user can serve any number of pages, and subscribing is done manually.
serve feeds like you would if you just hosted a blog yourself, but with authentication done by the directory. actions like faves and comments are done by one user making an API request to another user's instance of the software. have the directory introduce people instances to each other; authenticated interactions between users can be done with public key cryptography after that.
and make it so users can't share posts. you can only subscribe to others, like an RSS feed or gallery site. you can link to people or posts but any spreading of ideas has to be done manually and with intention.
for posting, imagine something like a cross between cohost and a static site generator. WYSIWYG, with a theme directory and user-editable templates, infinite presentation customizability, within one's own blog and posts.
a perfect place for small networks of friends to keep up with each other. lightweight, easy to host. not so wracked by convulsions of discourse or baseless callouts, and not dependent upon a centralized authority to maintain your connection; if the directory went down, you could still see your friends' blogs and keep in touch. build user instances to operate in a degraded but functional mode with no directory present, for independent/private clusters or network survival.
some of Mastodon, some of Cohost, some of the old ways.
call it Campfire. a thing you can build yourself to sit around, finding comfort with friends. a refuge from the cold, dark night.
