I think Blogger is still the best and most flexible platform.

Pros of blogger: 1) Extremely free speech and very little moderation (as long as it's legal)

2) Allows adult content

3) Can have ads for free

4) Unlimited photos (for images under 2000px, but even those over that are resized and don't count to storage quota)

5)You can do a lot with posts, pages, themes and editing HTML (can make complex web sites with a lot of sections and styling)

I've had a Blogger blog for 13 years and a gazillion posts and images and dump everything of interest on there and it's great. I do hope it lasts.

Wordpress.com has a better editor and better themes, but lacks editing html and deep customization, umlimited uploads, free ads and so on so it's not really an alternative for someone like me.