Hmmm, it may not be for you, but for better or worse, it certainly is for many people.

Twitter is actually one of the best places for breaking news. It's fast, easily updated and can respond to changes quickly. It's not exclusively filled with hot takes and memes. As you say, not everything can, or should, be instantaneous. But good luck convincing everybody to be more considered and read beyond the headlines (I mean that genuinely. I'm trying to convince people of that too).

It's almost impossible to say to what degree the US government is involved in content moderation, but my gut feeling is not much. China demonstrates pretty clearly that it's possible, but also that it's almost impossible to do without leaving pretty obvious traces. The idea that the US government is doing significant content moderation without anybody noticing is hard to square with the facts.

But yeah, ultimately, this is all an experiment. All of society is an experiment. And I'm genuinely curious about how it turns out. I won't shed a single tear if Twitter disappears tomorrow, and if it can thread the needle of allowing the freest possible speech while not descending into more of a hellscape, I'll be cheering it on.

p.s. I do think Musk's universal verification gimmick was a hilariously stupid idea though, and thankfully it seems that he's come to the same conclusion. Credibility needs to be earned.