When our first child was born, we wanted to share photos with family. So I set up a Google photos album and shared it with parents, aunts, grandparents, etc.

It supports general chat plus comments and reactions linked to posted media. It's exactly what I wish social networks became... Something like the "circles" idea that Google abandoned years ago.

Now with several thousand images and videos and comments we're hitting the limits of what Google seems to have designed for with however shared albums sync.

This community feature though is the only reason I haven't self hosted all this stuff...