Popular social media sites, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, have moved to a new revenue stream, i.e., paid subscription, for added services that are, IMHO, not worth the subscription. In fact, I think you are even getting less for subscribing. Why are they doing this? Well, less people are using their services and advertisers are decreasing their spend on these sites. Death will soon come to these services, so do not get caught with your pants down. Time to move, but where?
If you have not heard of the fediverse, or the federated universe, yet, then it is time that you learn about it. The fediverse is made up of different services that talk to each other using an open protocol, ActivityPub. For simplicity's sake, think of it like e-mail. You can get your e-mail service from any company that offers it, free or paid, but regardless of which company's services you use, you can still send and receive e-mail to and from others. Why? Open standard protocols, that's why. Your favorite Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, do not behave like that, because they want you all to themselves (locking you in, making you addicted).
The fediverse is vast. One of the most popular services is Mastodon, a Twitter-like service. There is also Misskey and Calckey that work the same way. PeerTube is a YouTube alternative. Pixelfed is an Instagram alternative. All of these talk to each other - yes, the beauty of ActivityPub. In addition, Micro.blog is now part of the fediverse, and Wordpress blogs can now be part of the fediverse via a plug-in. Tumblr and Flickr are exploring adding the protocol as well. Apple, with their latest OS version, just added rich content previews for Mastodon on iMessage, like what it did with Twitter. If this isn't a validation of Mastodon, then I do not know what is. More online services are joining the fediverse, so what are you waiting for?
The universal timeline is here now. Join a Mastodon, Misskey, Calckey server, or even Micro.blog, and follow users from all over the fediverse. Your timeline can be a mix of posts from Mastodon, Micro.blog, PeerTube, Pixelfed, and Wordpress. If you use a mobile client, then you have all of those accounts on your single, universal timeline. In some case, you will follow multiple accounts from the same person - each from different services. In my case, I have Micro.blog, Mastodon, and PixelFed. You cannot do this with the existing, proprietary services.
I do not have Facebook and Instagram accounts, but I still have Twitter. I only cross-post on Twitter (from Mastodon and Micro.blog) and I don't reply to mentions there. When Elon Musk starts implementing his new paid API services soon, which means third party services start disconnecting, that will signal the end of my Twitter activity. Look for me on social.lol instead.