I'm pretty pessimistic, given that they've cut their moderation teams so close to the bone. Asia-Pacific in particular has gone to near-zero, and that's an enormous source of CSE content. It's hard to believe that Twitter will really have much capability to handle this content (let alone responding to police reports about it) unless they do something to build this capability back up. On the other hand they chopped out some low-hanging fruit by removing hashtags and getting a burst of good PR, which seems good but probably not sustainable.
Seems like in the scheme of things the loss of moderation capability is the real story here, but I guess we can always be hopeful that the reality will match the short-term PR.
This seems like the kind of argument one invents when one has an axe to grind. Everyone agrees CSE on social networks needs to be moderated, there isn't a lot of controversy around it. I'm sure you didn't spend 50% of your time being angry about CSE moderation on Instagram last week, that doesn't mean all your other opinions are invalid.
You only need to look at Epstein to know that they're in on it. Best case they're happy to allow and enable and excuse it so long as there is money and power in it for them. Worst case they actively use it for blackmail and control and keeping their members in line.
This isn't a "conspiracy theory" and would not even be a new shocking fact about their behavior. It would actually be more surprising to learn the rulers who cheerfully conspire to start wars that kill hundreds of thousands of people and steal trillions of dollars from the commoners would draw the line at abusing a few more children. That is a baseless fringe theory that would require extraordinary evidence to substantiate.
Seems like in the scheme of things the loss of moderation capability is the real story here, but I guess we can always be hopeful that the reality will match the short-term PR.