alt Hacker Newsand you expect these “go to website, sign up” people to take the extra step to select a provider for repoing data? these people can barely pick a mastodon instance, what sort of data ownership integration work do you expect? it’s a consideration that’s more niche than the current status quo. unless you’re fine with people defaulting to onedrive or similar.
no, I expect them to go to a store to buy the same product that their friend bought. then I expect them to use that product by scanning a QR code that comes up on their TV, and then registering an account using the site linked by that code (or, just using their tv's remote to sign up, with an on-screen keyboard, or whatever).
not "a server so simple, anyone could host it"; "a set top box that gives me a private social media storage, network data storage, secure external connections, and effortless integration with all of my other iot devices". note that the former requires you to know what hosting is, while the latter only requires that you know what you want to do, without having to understand the details of how its done.