What social network platforms should I try in early 2022?

[sparr]

Every year I commit to seriously using social networks other than Facebook. I read my news feed on other networks before visiting FB. I cross post things to other networks in addition to FB. This usually lasts for a few weeks, some years a couple of months, before the effort becomes too much and I fall back to just using FB and Reddit again with occasional forays onto Twitter and Instagram and Fetlife. Ever since the death of G+ I’ve had little hope of something getting the critical mass to dislodge FB from the collective habits of the generations around mine, but that doesn’t stop me from checking occasionally to see what’s out there.

The contenders from last year that I’ll be trying again this year are Mastodon (federated Twitter-like), Diaspora (federated Livejournal/Dreamwidth-like), NextDoor (neighborhood-restricted Facebook-like), and SubStack (Medium-like).

Last year’s contenders that I don’t currently plan to try again are MeWe and Lemmy.

I’m also using a few single-community sites on platforms like Mighty. If Mighty had a centralized news feed and client it would be a serious contender, but they don’t seem to be headed in that direction.

What else should I be trying this year? I’ve heard some folks mentioning Urbit which is relatively new, and Ello and Minds which I tried years ago, but none of them have jumped out at me as worth the effort now/again.