[the_arcadian]

There's some willful denial here on HN and in other places that 1) twitter is being punished because it seems its role as supporting free speech rather than policing misinformation, 2) Elon Musk, as founder of Paypal and CEO of Starlink, has more than enough Internet / technical knowledge to run a site like twitter, 3) twitter itself is just not all that complicated and was probably due for an overhaul / rewrite anyway, and 4) investors don't buy companies to run them the exact same way that they were run before, they do it because they see both wasted resources and additional value and opportunity, which means they're always going to lay off some people and hire others.

Ultimately, twitter will be judged by its users, and whether they find value in the site, and whether its financially viable - income meets expenses. I think twitter's free speech & openness virtually guarantees the former, since everyone will be able to find something that they like on the platform and ignore the rest. The latter will be opaque for quite a while, since twitter is now private and, I assume, won't be disclosing its financial data except as required by taxes / regulation.

[camel_Snake]

Regarding your first point, I'm not sure why this sentiment exists. Twitter isn't any more free-speech than it was before. We've seen some accounts un-banned, like Babylon Bee but not Donald Trump. We've seen plenty other accounts newly banned as well for what is clearly parody. Feels like a wash on that front.

I'm relying on hearsay now, but if some employees were really let go for bad-mouthing Elon in the company slack[1], that's certainly not a company attitude congruent with the principals of free speech. It's also notably a reversal of previous Twitter policy, which encouraged free discussion whether critical of leadership or not.

[1] https://nitter.net/caseynewton/status/1592539948745650176

[the_arcadian]

As far as I know, Musk hasn't removed any comments critical of him or his management.