I feel like setting up the social media is a solved problem. And while getting users is hard, if you hook up to the fediverse, you can piggy back off other Platforms. I think the harder problem is making it profitable

> if you hook up to the fediverse

No this is the hard problem. HN people live in a bubble. Anything else than signup with oauth and then having access to everyone and its too hard and 99% of people will click away.

I think the friction is higher than that. With few exceptions I basically won't use any new service that requires me to create an account. I do all my online shopping on sites that offer guest checkout. Zero chance I'm creating any new social accounts at this point.

Again, this is HN bubble stuff. The vast majority of people do not mind oauth or account.

You using the word oauth means you're in the same bubble. People want signup with Google or Apple or even better, username/password signup or zero signup