It may seem intimidating, but let me assure you that you could absolutely run a fediverse¹ instance for you and a few friends / family members.

[trendless@zeroes.ca]

It may seem intimidating, but let me assure you that you could absolutely run a fediverse¹ instance for you and a few friends / family members. And although it's gotten a bit more expensive in the past month, getting your hands on a VPS in a Canadian datacentre and a .ca² domain is still very reasonably priced.

If you're interested in such a thing but don't know where to start, I'll gladly act as sherpa, gratis.

--
¹GoToSocial, Mastodon, Glitchsoc, Sharkey, etc

².ca is one of the cheapest, but you can use any top-level domain; eg .com, .cc, .social, etc