It could be the case that Musk is an a-hole who happens to be right. Maybe Twitter's OPEX expanded to fill whatever seemed right for the massive ad revenue (or

It could be the case that Musk is an a-hole who happens to be right. Maybe Twitter's OPEX expanded to fill whatever seemed right for the massive ad revenue (or "potential" revenue). They probably did not need an enormous engineering team to keep the site running. But beyond "just running" I am curious how difficult it is for them to combat spam/bots/griefers/hatemongers. Spending money on moderators and some kind of engineering to make the moderation team productive is a good investment. As much as some folks hate it, I think paying for the service makes a great deal of sense. Just imagine how much better these things might be if they weren't all driven by adtech. But yeah it could also easily become Twitter's death knell. That network effect will work in your favor right up until it starts working in your biggest competitor's favor. Market leaders can't hold on forever. re: "paying for it" - I think it would be a potentially awesome experiment to provide a service like [Gmail+Twitter+LinkedIn] for something like $5/mo or maybe even $10/yr. And what if you could get some incremental funding from government grants or NGOs & philanthropists who saw this as a public good (the same way some endowments fund public radio, TV etc).