Sure there’s a lot of garbage out there, but YouTube and platforms like Substack allow former corporate journalists who want more freedom to do proper investigative stuff. You just have to be discerning with your sources.
I like Zeteo (Mehdi Hassan, formerly MSNBC), Drop Site News (Jeremy Scahill, formerly TheIntercept) and The Real News Network (Chris Hedges, formerly NYT) the best. Breaking Points also put out some good commentary occasionally.
Like it or not, Twitter is still the de-facto place for breaking news stories. You just have to sift through the dross.
As much as Mastodon is a far nicer and healthier social platform, it has a long way to go before it gets anywhere close in this particular regard.