What does this even mean, privacy respecting blog? Do you mean you want a blog that only you and your friends can read? Can you afford $8 a year? If yes I’d get a basic web hosting plan at namecrane.com which offers a lot of 1-click application installs. Then put password protection in front of the blog.

If you want to protect the privacy of your readers to be respected you won’t have much choice but to create your own website, and store it on a privacy respecting webhost whil using non privacy-invasive techs to manage your blog.

For example, I use Hugo (a static website generator, but there are other similar tools), without any script running on the website itself. So, there is zero tracking going on on my blog (I don’t even know if anyone is reading it unless they decide to send me an email, as there is no web contact form either). It’s hosted on a small host that I’ve been using (& trusting) for well over a decade. Hugo itself is 100% free, but the webhost rarely is. So, unless you know how to self-host you will have to pay a little something (you don’t need much to host a simple blog, unless you want to post video?).

Like suggested in another comment, if you just want to limit access to the content, any simple ready made solution allowing for password-controlled access should do the trick.

You might consider Wafrn, which is a federated system like Lemmy. There are four instances listed there as open to new accounts right now.

You can even post to Lemmy with it, and people will be able to follow you with Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, etc… and optionally, Bluesky.