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This is excellent
This ... feels like a Unix-class-solution for a social network: reuse of simple, orthogonal pieces to create a new system.
The true value of FB or any other company to its users is mainly twofold: keeping the spammer/scammers at bay, keeping your account secure and available.

These are some things distributed social networks, even email based, don’t have an answer too yet.

Remember email before Gmail? Spam everywhere. Now everybody has Gmail, which I don’t see it much better than everybody having FB.

Plus, IMHO, email has to be replaced by something where email addresses are not tied to a provider, so people can change their providers without too much hassle.

If you think about it, email is a business/organization tool: <User>@<Business> and not a perfect fit for personal communication.

Imagine if your phone number was tied forever to your phone provider.

But you can buy your personal domain and use an email address on your personal domain. mail@konstantinschubert.com is mine for example.

You can even use it with Google if you're willing to pay 5 Dollar a month for gsuite.

I can, and do. But your average Jane cannot.
I don’t feel like this applies as broadly as it used to

There are numerous small business owners, started with buying the domain and building a website

The tools for this are just GUIs over devops processes anymore.

Very little insight is needed about the DNS system or HTTP

There’s no reason this couldn’t be wrapped in an appropriate workflow for users

That’s something of a vain talking point for IT folks

Like saying patients need to know everything about anatomy and physiology before using OTC cold meds

Good point.

EDIT: Actually, I think that Godaddy upsells email pretty hard when you buy a domain there. I don't think it requires manual DNS configuration. Though of course you are right that most people won't bother.

> keeping the spammer/scammers at bay

I’m not sure Facebook even cares about that. I’ve seen and reported a lot of blatantly obvious spam and fake accounts and nothing gets done, the accounts were still there months later.