This is different, but with some minor modifications this sounds a lot like Scuttlebutt. Have you tried Patchwork?
> you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?)
People individually run "pubs", which are servers (with hosting costs), but every user also acts as a potential server, caching and proxying encrypted communications on behalf of other users, which acts as a sort of "cost", though it's not directly monetary.
> software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance
Apart from the central protocol, niche needs are met by various clients—e.g. there is a dedicated chess client for users who just want to play chess over the social network.
> need not be exclusive of technical leadership
While the SSBC is in no way dictatorial and even often jokey, I think their clients demonstrate exceptional technical leadership. The strategy of having a protocol with many clients usually leads to having many disparate clients of low quality. On the contrary, most users use Patchwork, the main stable SSBC-maintained client; it's the most "Facebook-ish" of the clients and is very intuitive.
> you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?)
People individually run "pubs", which are servers (with hosting costs), but every user also acts as a potential server, caching and proxying encrypted communications on behalf of other users, which acts as a sort of "cost", though it's not directly monetary.
> software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance
Apart from the central protocol, niche needs are met by various clients—e.g. there is a dedicated chess client for users who just want to play chess over the social network.
> need not be exclusive of technical leadership
While the SSBC is in no way dictatorial and even often jokey, I think their clients demonstrate exceptional technical leadership. The strategy of having a protocol with many clients usually leads to having many disparate clients of low quality. On the contrary, most users use Patchwork, the main stable SSBC-maintained client; it's the most "Facebook-ish" of the clients and is very intuitive.