There was a world and a life before Twitter, and there is one without Twitter as well.
I deleted my Twitter account about a year ago and have not missed anything. People and topics I am interested in I can updated on by many different means.
It's more like this place than Twitter, in a way.
Or, it's kind of similar to how Usenet was in the early 90s.
It's a simple linear feed of who've subscribed to, or what the people you've subscribed to have "boosted". So you find the interest groups you're into and join a node that matches that, then find the people you like on various nodes, and follow them. There's no recommendations really. There's hashtags, but few ways to "discover" them and they don't seem to get heavily used right now.
It's maybe like Twitter when it first launched. Certainly not what it became (which I never personally participated in).
It certainly doesn't have the level of "action" or "engagement" you'd find on Twitter. And that's probably a good thing.
For authors, other communities exist as well.
Yes, and it was much harder to shill newsletters, courses, conspiracies and cryptocoins back then on the back of minor internet blogger fame.
There is significant money to be made in all of the above, which is why a replacement for Twitter (holding people in a dopamine cage) is inevitable, whether we need it or not.