Are you willing to pay for such a service? More importantly, are you willing and able to convince enough of your network to pay for it?

Otherwise, any system will asymptotically look like Twitter/Blah. You could very well use your group chat feature on regular cell phone as a start (takes care of the payment aspect). But soon you or your friends will want feature X. So, cough up more $$ again.

Another option is to cultivate real life friends/family that you can hang out with, chat, share photos in the privacy of your home/blah (wait till covid passes please).