I've been thinking about this sort of thing for a couple of months now. I really like the idea of an open-source social network, maybe supported in part or in full by crowdfunding via something like Patreon. If the intention is connection rather than profit, you'd mostly just need to cover server/hosting fees. Of course, that's still not a cheap proposition.

But I'd rather have a small network focused on good connections than a large network focused on invading and selling user data, and maybe a smaller network could be managed by user contributions over investments that lead to treating users as the product.