What a surprise: developers getting screwed by big centralized companies. Nowadays wasting time and money building anything on the shoulder of another company is crazy. It's not if but when are you getting screwed: Twitter, Facebook, Apple, this is history repeating itself plenty fold.

I'm just surprised nobody mentioned any decentralised, blockchain-based platform where spending time and money building on it is just worth it for the future.

Have a look at the Steem blockchain: social network like publishing and commenting are free and even rewarded with crypto-currency payouts. And as a developer it is very elegant to develop on it.