Josh —
This is exactly what Mastodon is doing with its “instances”, which are communities/servers that set their own rules of engagement and can federate with one another. But, there are tradeoffs:

Mastodon and the pursuit of a utopian online community

Are you frustrated with the way you experience news and research?
We have a better way for you to get informed and inform others, so we’re inviting people to help test what we’re working on at Annotote.
If you’re interested, try it here:

Annotote >>> leave your mark