There's Mastodon, but last time I was there it was only really big with a slightly creepy Japanese anime crowd. There just wasn't that much interesting English content to read.

Mastodon's API's are mostly open source standards which means they tend to be messy and inconsistent.

As far as user monetization the main strategy was predictable pleas for Patreon donations and some people constantly begging for money with a new crisis/excuse each day or various forms of victim hood.

I still like Twitter because it has high signal to noise ratio news feeds and power users, once you find them. Not sure how usable its going to be once they gut their Stream API in a month though.

To be honest, all social networks look like they are in various stages of epic FAIL and the perennial search for the new one that is going make it all better is probably in vain.

There are a slew of inherent structural problems in social networks many of which arise out of the fact that crowds, tribes, herds tend to bring out and amplify the worst in human nature. Its recommended you read up on mimetic theory before you play:

https://www.ravenfoundation.org/faqs/#dialog

There is also a fundamental, difficult to resolve, conflict between the two forms of free speech identified in Ancient Greece, isegoria and parrhesia.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/two-con...

Either you allow largely unconstrained free speech and your network turns in to an abusive cess pool, or you constantly police and suppress it and it turns in to China. There isn't really an easily identified middle road.