Yes, but different. Twitter is “free”, but has over 4,000 employees (Facebook 21,000 and Google 88,000). How do they pay for all those people, buildings, data centers, privacy lawsuits, congressional lobbying, etc? They sell a product and it is you. They know much, much more about you than just the info you share in your profile. In exchange for your privacy and attention, their “customers” (not you) pay big bucks.
These social networking companies are private enterprises with their own business and (increasingly extreme) political agendas. In addition to making money, they censor people who deviate from their secular, Silicon Valley viewpoint. Christians and conservatives are often targets, but it can be anyone, as their values and aggressiveness constantly shift. Should your views on abortion, marriage, families, gender “fluidity”, euthanasia, politics, truthful news sources and many other areas differ from theirs (believe it, if you are a faithful Christian it does), you may easily find yourself sanctioned or banned for your violation of their vague “community standards”. When you use these services to read other folks’ messages, know that you are reading a filtered stream of messages approved by the tech oligarchs. The discussion is not open and actual truth is not particularly welcome.
RCsocial.net is part of the quickly growing Mastodon based response to these far too invasive and manipulative tech giants. It is a completely free resource without their gotchas. There is no advertising, data mining or censoring of Christian free speech. Silicon Valley, venture capitalists, profit motives, political and cultural indoctrination are not part of it.