[keiferski]

Yeah, I mean I am not personally working on a project in this space, nor do I have any super-strong feelings about it.

It's more that I like personal websites, from both an ownership and creative perspective. And so I wish there were more approaches which attempted to incentivize that model without creating a complicated new protocol, platform, etc. That might involve making it easier to create and self-host websites, an opt-in directory of personal sites with chat + forums attached, or something else like that.

[CaptArmchair]

For what it's worth, pubnix - public accessible UNIX systems - were/are that to an extent. You'd get a free account on some shared system, you log in via a terminal, and you get access to all those things: gopher/gemini/web hosting, chat, bulletin boards,...

Some modern day examples include: https://tilde.town/, https://tilde.club/ and https://sdf.org/.

But shell access doesn't appeal to non-tech users. It's the difference between engineering the electricity in your own house to become self-sufficient, and just expecting to magically get power when you plug a device in the socket.