"In 1918, Ford purchased his hometown newspaper, The Dearborn Independent.[76] A year and a half later, Ford began publishing a series of articles in the paper under his own name, claiming a vast Jewish conspiracy was affecting America.[77] The series ran in 91 issues. Every Ford dealership nationwide was required carry the paper and distribute it to its customers. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#Antisemitism_and_Th...
I think Musk bought Twitter to serve as his own platform, to spread his ideas and to suppress those of others.
One obvious problem with it is that if Twitter dies, some other site will take its place. The idea of tweeting isn’t going anywhere. It’d be a bit like trying to uninvent a bicycle.
More generally, a bunch of thoughtful people use Twitter, and Twitter DMs changed my life. It’s the AOL messenger of the 2020s. A low friction “DMs open” platform is very hard to come by — the closest before the messenger era was email, which usually isn’t a conversation. So there would be a real loss in terms of social value. E.g. TikTok requires both people follow each other before DMing, so there’s not even an option.
You’re not entirely mistaken, but the caveats seem worth calling out. On the whole it seems like more harm than good would come from the implosion.