Would this level of service be necessary to support the average FB users content submissions though? The key difference I think is that most of these assumptions gear towards a relatively static (in time) type of monolithically designed web-page, that gets updated every so often, and the whole thing gets loaded at each request more-or-less. A “status update” type info feed thingy wouldn’t need as much infrastructure, and doensn’t necessarily have the same requirements of real-time synchrony and demand oriented criticality, could work similar to sms - you get the updates when you get them. Haven’t run any numbers on it - but I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t require broadband speeds for a “reasonably sized” pool of connections. If it was mobile based the up/down symmetry wouldn’t be an issue, and if every member of the system dedicated a few GB on their phones you could have a batch-forward content pool.
Agree that the security questions are pretty tricky with a scheme like this - it would need a seriously thought through layer of separation from other private on-network systems. One way or the other though it seems that we’re moving rapidly toward using the bi-directional capabilities of our personal network connections, via the “cloud” and so-called iot devices, might as well connect things to our friends if we’re connecting to a bunch of corps.
Have had good success running an externally reachable system using OwnCloud/LibreCloud - and a regular home Comcast account. It’s like having your own Dropbox and Spotify based off a box living on top of the refrigerator.
