I’d use a free dynamic dns hoster

You can get SSL easily with ngninx proxy manager and letsencrypt

Easy setup with podman or docker compose nextcloud

https://github.com/nextcloud/docker#running-this-image-with-docker-compose

And

https://nginxproxymanager.com/guide/#quick-setup

I’d go with immich

Maybe https://www.kombuchaprivacy.com/circles/ suits your needs. It’s cool but not widespread.

Pixelfed is a nice social photo sharing service as others have already said

I’d highly suggest using a service like immich or nextcloud or any other photo software to share images. Use it in combination of a chat app like matrix/element/schildichat

That’s a client issue, not a protocol issue

No idea abiut cloudflare.

If you want a meshvpn, use zerotier. Easy as installing it on both devices and connecting them

Cool app at first glance!

I always wonder why some open source projects choose discord and not matrix?

Not with success but I’m using huggingface since a couple of days. You may want to have a look into it

Imo, such trackers aren’t useful for that. No other phone will report in which forest the dog is

Why is it called *arr? That’s misleading

Jitsi is unencrypted. Jitsi may be unencrypted. Nothing wrong for personal use. You may want to use element call https://call.element.io/ * (edit: as soon as it is out of beta) or matrix

Edit: what I wrote wasn’t right