I'm one of the seemingly very few people who think Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter is highly unlikely to either greatly improve political discourse or make it significantly worse.
Claims to the contrary, despite their popularity, are ultimately based on overestimation of the political impact of Twitter and still more so of the impact of its moderation policies.
A few relevant facts:
- Only about 25% of American adults use Twitter at all, and only a minority of them actually visit the site on a regular basis. Some 25% of users (6% of all adults) produce 97% of the content.
- Those who use the site regularly tend to have strong preexisting political views/partisan alignments, and therefore are unlikely to have their views massively changed. Very few swing voters use Twitter regularly.
- TV news, news websites, and other traditional media have far larger audiences than Twitter. Ditto for Facebook, by the way (used by almost 70% of adult Americans).
- Having a strong Twitter presence is neither necessary nor sufficient for political success. Consider that Joe Biden trounced Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 Democratic primaries, even though the latter had vastly greater Twitter presence vastly more support from "blue checkmark" accounts. Trump's banishment from Twitter (which, BTW, I have no objection to) has done little to loosen his grip on the GOP. And there's more where that came from.
- Perhaps you can argue that Biden's weak Twitter operation accounts for the decline in his support over the last year. But it's pretty obvious it was mainly due to such events as inflation and the Afghanistan fiasco. Biden can't Tweet his way back to popularity (Trump, of course, couldn't either).
- There's no shortage of political disinformation and misinformation from sources other than Twitter, some of them much more popular. Increasing or decreasing the amount on Twitter at the margin is unlikely to have much effect. The demand for misinformation is a far greater problem than the supply.
That said, I certainly agree there's lots of awful claptrap on Twitter. Perhaps Musk will make it even worse. Perhaps not. Either way, it matters a lot less than most people think!