Infrastructure would be the primary cost.
A CTO friend, myself and a third A list coder could have something running inside of a month on web and mobile if treated as a skunkworks style project. And it would be way prettier than gab. The tool sets are so easy now.
The biggest pain point would be hosting the backend outside of big tech. Even those patterns are well established. It is just that you don’t usually need to do them because of the clouds out there.
The other pain point is less technical. You need an infrastructure of people to moderate the platform. Yeah I get that some people want completely open. But you will get porn, pedophiles, and scumbags that do advocate violence. There needs to be some moderation. And, if you want to be on the app stores, you have to document it, unless you want to go through the courts on antitrust with the stores.
I personally want the stores monopoly power broken. But I don’t see it happening soon.
Could it be done with a skype type of thing? Record a video instead of a text?
Then those on the site could respond with a text?
BTW, I mention the recorded video because the Gab post the other day seems to have been from a fake.
Just my thought...
I believe that it would take about 6 months to setup a global “social Media” platform.
It would take about the same time to setup a global chain of Caching servers and deals for DNS hosting.
Use the EU rules for our benefit, encrypted email is already global, we can do that. Blockchain all comms, easy enough.
What do you think it would cost? 2 Billion, 4 Billion?
Lets talk serious guesses here, with a New fully funded party we can loose change about 10 billion our first year in donations. Not counting the PACS etc.
As for winning elections, a couple of our ppl here have presented a single step to taking control of the backdoor of the Political system (no, not hacking) and it lays dormant.
Keep in touch
Blessings