Add nostr to your list of platforms to try. It’s basically mastodon except:
Your identity is not tied to your instance. So if your instance closes, you don’t lose your followers, DMs, etc
Your instance can’t block you from following anybody else, same in the other direction
DMs are encrypted, your instance admin can’t read them
Nostr is its own protocol, it doesn’t talk natively with mastodon/lemmy/kbin/etc. But it is a federated protocol, so in addition to a twitter clone it has a YouTube clone and other kinds of platforms on it, and they can all talk to each other.
I use nostr and mastodon. IMO Nostr is going to win. It does everything mastodon does but without tying identity to an instance, I think that is really important.