So everybody has their own server.
Well, no.
Imagine an app to replace Facebook, or even the Free Republic. The app may be free (for the Free Republic) or paid for (the Facebook Replacement). Rather than all your postings and data being on servers or data centers that you have no control over, that information is in a "pod" that belongs to you. Obviously, you'd have to pay for that "pod" on some remote site (or keep it local), but it's yours to do with as you please. Multiple apps could use your "pod." You can develop or acquire apps to put in your "pod" and you control access to those apps.
It can be a server at home or a server you get via web hosting or a bonafide Solid POD server.
The problem with running a server at home is upload speeds tend to be very slow and your upload speed is the download speed for everyone surfing your stuff.
The problem with using web hosting for your server is that this Solid software runs on javascript so you need something like NODE.js running on the server and you also need root access, neither of which is available on your $5/month web hosting. Think more like $50/month and you need to know the commands and some programming.
That leaves you with existing Solid POD servers which will be free but far and few between and unreliable.
There are already distributed social networks out there. Diaspora is one. They haven’t been very successful due to the reasons mentioned above. High dollar hosting or really good upload speeds. I can’t even get the upload speeds required to host my own website as I live in the boonies. I would have to move to the city and then get business ISP service. Couple hundred $$ a month ought to cover it.
Maybe this upcoming 5G stuff will help. Not that I can even get a cell signal where I live. It’s DSL or nothing here.
Just now did a speed test. We’re running at about 8Mbps download speed and 0.70Mbps upload. 8Mbps allows me to surf pretty quickly. If 0.70 was my download speed, it would take a full minute for some sites to load. That means if I hosted a website on my computer, it would take every visitor(if one at a time) a full minute before my site would load for them. If 10 people tried to get on my site all at the same time, it simply wouldn’t work. One lucky person might be able to get to the site.
I imagine Tim Lerner-Lee has thought of all this and maybe has a plan but all that server space and bandwidth has to be paid for somehow. Will I have to watch an ad before I can access my data? Will someone else have to view an ad before they can see my stuff?