Shutting down twitter, rumble, and substack would be a massacre for independent media right now. Elon could make an offer that couldn't be refused on the other two, and turn on the censorship harder than Facebook.
The right-wing free speech heel turn is always the same: when you censor, you're trying to prevent the free expression of ideas, when we censor, we're trying to prevent the "support" of terrorism. Lèse-majesté is always around the corner.
But yeah, if there is a truly distributed system, that had facilities and incentives which support and even promote diverse interactions, that'd be even better.
The problem is that Musk came in and lifted the bans on a lot of people who were removed for roughly the correct thing, community standards. And then he let those very people help him find the voices you do want in the community and shut them down. Its gone beyond just echo chamber, and now the management has a clique. That clique doesnt just hate free speech, they loathe the people that largely use such rights like journalists.
Then of course theres all the shit about compliance with foreign governments etc. Twitters going to be an amazing case study one day in the future that will likely conclude against "free speech" as Musk poorly interprets it.
My impression is that the goal isn't to uphold free speech, its never done that, its to create a safe space to be an asshole. And that if you can hold your own against the assholes, then they will find a way to abuse their position in the clique to get you banned.
Back in the day you had these coffee shops, that may or may not be partially responsible for the success of so called western civilization. People would travel across europe to visit and exchange ideas with likeminded people. Thats not what social media is. People arent having robust, intentional, intellectual discussions, they are forming tribes and attacking each other with whatever weapons are available. People wake up in the morning and check their notifications like people in the blitz looking out the window to see if their neighbors survived the night. Aiding one side or the other of the conflict should never be conflated with "promoting diverse interactions".
All the abuses you're describing, were going on previously, it was just accepted by the majority as a good-thing, because it was only hurting "Nazi's". I'm not supporting anything the current ownership does on that basis, i'm saying we should all be fighting for a new paradigm, not just recreating the old one on a new platform.
And currently, there are very few voices standing up for a healthier interaction between people with opposing views. This will take a lot more than any technological fix, it will require an attitude shift. That isn't possible if we take our respective corners, and only come out when the fight-bell rings.