"Users who just use a phone as their primary computer will still want to able to publich to their millions of followers, and so it wouldn't work to have these millions of people connect directly to this person's device."
You have shifted the discussion from small overlay network for friends and family to large overlay network for "millions of followers".
Those methods of sharing content with "millions of followers" are already available and will no doubt continue to be available.
A small private network is a different idea, with a different purpose. People will always have the choice of using a public network however a small overlay can avoid sending traffic through third party servers, like Facebook's.
There is no requirement that a service has to be "free", or supported by ads. This is something else you injected in the discussion. I use free software to set up overlays, but I have to pay for internet service and hosting. The cost of the "service" is not the setup it is the internet access and hosting.
Your idea doesn't sound particularly tenable. A pay social network that limits you to only your close friends and family, that will have no network effects, have less features, and be more difficult to set up...
It's easy for people to point what they don't like about Facebook, but I don't think you are really comprehending why they dominated the social network space to begin with. It's not as easy as making a product that doesn't advertise, if it costs money to use instead.
Tenable for what? You are injecting your own ideas. Why would I care about the reasons Facebook is popular. The idea I submitted was to make the process of setting up overlay networks easier, not to try to start a web-based business. Making software easier to use is a tenable idea. The ideas you are introducing might not be tenable. However, they are not my ideas. The pattern I see is you introduce some idea, attribute it to me, then shoot it down.
You have shifted the discussion from small overlay network for friends and family to large overlay network for "millions of followers".
Those methods of sharing content with "millions of followers" are already available and will no doubt continue to be available.
A small private network is a different idea, with a different purpose. People will always have the choice of using a public network however a small overlay can avoid sending traffic through third party servers, like Facebook's.
There is no requirement that a service has to be "free", or supported by ads. This is something else you injected in the discussion. I use free software to set up overlays, but I have to pay for internet service and hosting. The cost of the "service" is not the setup it is the internet access and hosting.