> It's one of the smallest social networks and Twitter as Twitter, i.e. the one big open forum with politicians, journalists scientists etc _is_ it's competitive advantage. So I don't know how you get from Twitter to X when almost every other social media does the things X would do better than Twitter.
Being the elites' gathering place is indeed its biggest advantage, and the fact that consumers can get public visibility on issues they're facing helps companies with their public image. There are many times where I or friends have posted about issues after exhausting the standard support channels, and quickly cut through the bureaucratic red tape and got our problem solved. I think that's a monetizable angle.
I think something similar would apply to other elites as well. Politicians can get direct feedback from constituents, music artists get direct feedback from fans (see the recent Lizzo "spaz" thing), and so on. However, in the current climate, elites are getting skewed feedback, so "more free speech" could actually help, if it's done right.
Maybe, but most of these things would require "brand safety" which is in the opposite direction of free speech. Maybe if twitter had billions of users like facebook, they could strongarm companies and get away with it, but all of the things you describe are probably going to require twitter directly interfacing with said celebrities/politiians/journalists, which will require lots more employees and a different tact than Musk seems to be taking.
Besides the fact that "more free speech" seems to involve making fun of trans people and bringing back donald trump, which do not correlate with more accurate feedback to elites.
We'll see how it goes, but "making fun of trans people" is an unfair summary of the situation. Megan Murphy and Rowling were not making fun of trans people, for instance.
You are correct, my purpose was to diminish the value of so called “free speech” for a platform like Twitter, not to diminish the negative impact on those targeted. I did not mean to exclude those targeted by death threats but you are correct that there are many other consequences of “free speech”, and I also don’t believe death threats provide value to twitter as a platform.
Being the elites' gathering place is indeed its biggest advantage, and the fact that consumers can get public visibility on issues they're facing helps companies with their public image. There are many times where I or friends have posted about issues after exhausting the standard support channels, and quickly cut through the bureaucratic red tape and got our problem solved. I think that's a monetizable angle.
I think something similar would apply to other elites as well. Politicians can get direct feedback from constituents, music artists get direct feedback from fans (see the recent Lizzo "spaz" thing), and so on. However, in the current climate, elites are getting skewed feedback, so "more free speech" could actually help, if it's done right.