I find the ideas of data coops to be very appealing. I don't want to depend on faceless mega-corps like Google to host stuff like my email, but I also don't find the idea self-hosting to be realistic. I wouldn't mind paying for the security since losing access to certain accounts would be a disaster, but I'm already locked in, and the benefits of existing services would be marginal compared to the cost of moving.

ideally you should be able in a simple way to host your stuff, in this case in a POD. That service should be provided by a utility company, same way we have internet providers now. They will be well regulated and it would be in their interest to safely hold your data because if not, they would face legal and financial consequences.

All other services would read/write from your Pod.