universe - Is time itself speeding up universally?

The rate at which a clock ticks is a local property. There is no universal rate of time which could speed up, so the answer is no.

A clock stationary in the same frame of reference, and the same gravitational field as me will tick at the same rate, (one second every second) It is only clocks that are moving, or in different gravitational fields that that tick at a different rate. If I am falling into a black hole, and I stop the check the time, I wouldn't see my watch slow down.

So there is no standard clock rate. Clocks in the early universe (or at least things that depend on time, such as nuclear decay) ran at the same rate, in their local gravitational field (at one second per second)

If we were to observe a clock from the early universe, it would be receding at great velocity (and so it would be redshifted and time dilated)

Now, the gravitational time dilation does not depend on the amount of mass directly, but on the intensity of the gravitational field. A galaxy has huge mass, but the only place in which the gravitational field is significant (from a GR perspective) is in the neighbourhood of Neutron stars and black holes.

To get gravitational time dialtion you need an intense gravitational field. Just having a lot of mass is not enough. After the period of inflation, the universe was homogeneous, and there were no significant "lumps" to give a net gravitational field. As the gas in the universe collapsed into galaxies and stars, and eventually black holes regions of intense gravity formed, in which clocks would run slowly.

However there is no general speeding up of clocks in the universe.