This seems to be a key element of Twitter's success that Musk does not understand.
Much of the utility of Twitter was that it provided a record of all sorts of public communications, from automated updates about a museum being closed, to weird jokes that went viral across different social networks, to a rambling thread about a sex worker's trip to Miami that was made into a movie, to updates from people who were near the epicentre of earthquakes, to resignation statements from prominent politicians.
People like Musk who spend all day on Twitter might plausibly pay for it. But part of the reason for that is because everyone not on Twitter could see that important things happened there, and everyone who was on it got to feel like they got to be part of the first draft of history.
If you try and research internet drama (including internet drama of wider import) from a few years ago, you simply run into the impossibility of seeing embedded tweets w/ replies or accessing whole threads.
Much of the utility of Twitter was that it provided a record of all sorts of public communications, from automated updates about a museum being closed, to weird jokes that went viral across different social networks, to a rambling thread about a sex worker's trip to Miami that was made into a movie, to updates from people who were near the epicentre of earthquakes, to resignation statements from prominent politicians.
People like Musk who spend all day on Twitter might plausibly pay for it. But part of the reason for that is because everyone not on Twitter could see that important things happened there, and everyone who was on it got to feel like they got to be part of the first draft of history.
If you try and research internet drama (including internet drama of wider import) from a few years ago, you simply run into the impossibility of seeing embedded tweets w/ replies or accessing whole threads.