I keep thinking of John Gordon's "How to build a safe and sane social network" this weekend. "Essentially it’s the public radio model." Intriguing.

Unlike the raw indieweb -- interesting ideas, but a science project -- Gordon's is a model that could actually be workable. It's a federation of nodes, where each node is used by multiple people. The tech people (let's call them "tinkerers") can run the nodes, while the non-tinkerers can participate either for free or for for a small donation.

The critical part is that it allows for easy use by non-tinkerers, aka "normal people."