The whole setting up a website and justifying the cost for a public log/journal...Not so much. It's still clunky and costly enough that it pushes people to platforms handling all the tech backend for them, whether nonprofit or for profit. I think if enough of the technical side were made less cumbersome (and this is from someone that's okay with tech jank), then the financial costs wouldn't be as much of a factor for many since for modest sites they're already rather low.
Although if I'm overestimating site setup stuff, I'd love to read how. All the research I've done has been somewhat discouraging when it comes to handling hosting a site yourself (i.e. security concerns, traffic handling, etc.).
Blog-style sites have never been as cheap to run as right now. For small-to-midsize sites run mostly as static sites, it might even be close to free.
Virtually all cost is in the human labor, and the challenge of running a sustainable business model like subscriptions off of "words" which I think are valuable but getting audiences to agree is very hard.
But we might be seeing a turnaround here. I'm hopeful!
For sure, and I'm kinda hopeful too, for more personal sites of all sorts in general tbh.
It's that technical part though that I think remains the big barrier for many, at least for those that want to more fully hold the reins over their online space.