+1. And you read it because you're visiting hackernews (also central, private, for-profit). It's a systemic problem. That's why we need new tools that let us operate outside that system.
Also, HN isn't for-profit (although YC is). Like, yeah, it's not a non-profit, but it's not designed to make any money either.
Something like RSS: Pick up all posts tagged such and such from these users.
I've thought a bit about this and if we really wanted to we could get really far with just a few hundred lines of code as well as some html templates.
Problem is, most people like facebook and instagram :-/
The thing about HN is voting and comments, both of which require manual moderation to be effective.
We could even automate it so if my post reader notices several of my sources following another source it will ask me if I want to look at or follow that source, etc.
All the tools to create personal websites existed more than 20 years ago. They haven't disappeared.
If anything they're probably cheaper, easier to find and to configure now, and also, more diverse, slicker, have more features, etc... And as pointed out by others, distributed social networks have existed for probably about ten years now.
And yes, the fact that the author chose to publish this pompous trite on medium is laughable.