Have you tried mastodon? Pleroma? Misskey? Akkoma? None of them have pointlessly complicated nonsense like “NFC” or whatever but all of them let you share things with a small group of friends and have control over who can see whatever you post. There are people using fedi like that. You may find it difficult to find them, for obvious reasons. But if you and your friends want to start doing it there’s nothing stopping you.
Have you tried mastodon? Pleroma? Misskey? Akkoma? None of them have pointlessly complicated nonsense like “NFC” or whatever but all of them let you share things with a small group of friends and have control over who can see whatever you post. There are people using fedi like that. You may find it difficult to find them, for obvious reasons. But if you and your friends want to start doing it there’s nothing stopping you.