Having Google/facebook and big techs blocking you may be a hurdle. hands down. But I tell you, when I want to read the news I type in the banner directly the website I want. I don't go to google, or search engines. You know where you want to go.
I am doing things same way as you described. I don't even have facebook account and google regstration is just because of youtube addon to multimedia centre. And I am happy that I am not alone and there are other people like I am, but I think that it is minority of people just like we are. The project you described is really good theoretically, but if it will be used just by minority I am afraid that majority of people will be manipulated to not use it at all (by gov, big tech companies etc). And in nowadays it is majority what matters.