It's just really annoying to do that right now and the solutions that attempt to make it easy and slick aren't quite there.
This type of thing could be made more popular with normal people if it's easy enough since popular features which "break" the business models of companies like Facebook become popular (e.g. filtering of news feed that under the users direct control or lossless storage of photos).
I think most people would be happier owning the hardware than renting an online service.
I hear your argument. No VC-funded start-up is likely to make moves in this space. But your question ignores a whole sector of the economy: non-profits. I believe there even have been some non-profit social network attempts (perhaps even still active), though I can't recall their names.
Honestly, if it manages to approximately implement the community approach that works under Wikimedia itself, it may well become the most non-toxic social network, as they self-advertise it.
How can that be so when we have websites like Wikipedia, or Openstreemap?
Mastodon exists. It is what you described. It is paid for either by generous individuals or by donations.
Aether works that way. It is missing the anonymity OP wants but everything else is there.
If it is generally useful to society but unprofitable to provide, isn’t that the category of things that the government should fund and operate like a utility?
That said, I don’t think the government should be in the business of running social networks. But at the same time I didn’t think China would get so much more right about the Internet than we have.
The answer is yes - yes it is too much to ask for - you don't get a free service without paying for it in some other way - mostly these days through the data mining/advertising side of things. If there's no way to turn a profit then why would someone pay for it to be setup?