This is essentially what I'm doing with https://personal.community (shameless shill) the next up on my to-do list is local storage caching for the data I pull, and eventually add a if cache older then x hours, fetch again.
I imagine they could write something that uses rc for retrieving data along with that login type verification, encouraging people to run their own hivemind nodes, which I hear is getting low on ram reqs,but not there yet.
Or even lite nodes, a type of "I'm only fetching data for these people that I follow" building essentially mini side chains or what have you.