I like mastodon. Not sure anyone here can accurately tell you whether it fits your needs (especially since ppl use twitter very differently).
One difference that sticks out to me is that mastodon isn't designed to goad for more engagement. For example, 'likes' on mastodon are public but not the same thing as 'resharing' in terms of appearing in timelines. Twitter used to treat likes similarly, but over time it changed. I imagine they saw more engagement when 'likes' were treated more and more like 'retweets.' I appreciate that on mastodon I can show the author of a post I like the content without automatically putting it in the feed of my own followers (and it's easy to do both if I chose to).
One difference that sticks out to me is that mastodon isn't designed to goad for more engagement. For example, 'likes' on mastodon are public but not the same thing as 'resharing' in terms of appearing in timelines. Twitter used to treat likes similarly, but over time it changed. I imagine they saw more engagement when 'likes' were treated more and more like 'retweets.' I appreciate that on mastodon I can show the author of a post I like the content without automatically putting it in the feed of my own followers (and it's easy to do both if I chose to).