[skybrian]

Plenty of people do this. It's called blogging. WordPress, Ghost, and so on run on many providers. But social networks are winning the popularity contest.

Perhaps something running on Sandstorm will make it easy enough for people to run their own nodes.

[imaginator]

You have a good point - the different blogging platforms do a good job. And create virtuous ecosystems around their code in the form of theme creators, hosting providers and consultants.

I think Kenton is onto a winner with Sandstorm - it stands half a chance to actually unify different blogging platforms. So while you may use a different blogging tool and comment - you have a unified email-like identity that follows you between tools, nodes and networks.

[skybrian]

The downside is that if they have a comment section, each blogger has to do their own moderation.

Social networks have the funds to hire these people: http://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/

I'm doubtful about how long Sandstorm would be able to stay strictly hands-off. Sooner or later everyone who allows random strangers to interact has to get into policing the content and that's nobody's idea of fun.