Only a small note: we have had a free, functional, decentralized social network in the past, even supported by thing like Microsoft Outlook. It's still there, despite semi-abandoned state, today. It have a name, of course: nntp news.

All we need if we want a free alternative to ANY social network is being back on nntp. Of course we can add features to it, we can start to shake heads and think seeing the role of IT today it it's time to buy serious mail solution, perhaps a VPS and a domain name, perhaps create a small home-server that mirror public/semipublic personal stuff from the VPS to us so we can easily jump from a vendor to another without change anything from our mail address to our datas.

IT is not only a game anymore, it start to be a serious thing even for casual people, better know a bit of it and be prepared.

I have been looking for an NNTP server that I can run privately, with a minimum of fuss, user accounts and encryption, so that I can host one for our family (previously we used G+, but that is being shut down).

I haven't found one that fits the bill.