The thing that friendica has over sites like Counter Social and Hive Social (and to a certain extent diaspora) is that it is a part of what is known as the fediverse. In short, the fediverse is a network of social media sites that communicate with each other, and share content within each other's feeds. So you will see posts on Friendica from a bunch of different places around the web, including Mastodon (a twitter like site), Pixelfed (an Instagram like site), WordPress, flipbook, Bluesky, and many others. The other benefit is that these platforms are not owned by a single individual, but rather are independent servers hosting open source software. You can communicate seamlessly between all of these servers, both within the platform, and between platforms. So it is a diverse and decentralized ecosystem of social networks, vs a single privately owned social network that are those other sites you mentioned, making it immune to takeover by billionaires. Diaspora is technically a part of the fediverse, but only marginally. It is also not really being developed by the original creators as far as I know, whereas friendica is still under active development and improvement.

The only downside to Friendica as I see it is the learning curve, but there are lots of helpful people on here willing to help you learn, so don't be afraid to ask questions!