I'm not sure I really get the points you're making here. You've said "I don't have an opinion over the consequences for politics over this" but also "free speech absolutism is possible and is beneficial". And "Filter bubbles? Doesn't have to be a thing" but also "degrade [bad actors] reputation and amplify the defence of the victims".
I don't (apparently controversially) think that a lack of "free speech" is anywhere near top of the list of Twitter's problems. It's way more pressing that the amazing content on it has become completely drowned out by a cacophony of bad actors. It's not just the bot armies, but the legions of individual contributors posting and sharing obvious churnalism and outrage bait that it's _impossible_ to escape from.
I had to stop using Twitter regularly maybe a year or so ago for my own health. I could feel my blood pressure spiking every time I opened the app, and it wasn't because of algorithms or filter bubbles or censorship – if anything, the opposite. It was just increasingly not possible to use it for the things I had always loved about it—breaking news, shared conversations, interesting updates etc. from people and organisations I was interested in—without having to wade through buckets of deliberately rage-inducing shit.
Twitter itself might bear some responsibility for that. The obvious bot problem is out of control, and it was becoming increasingly user hostile to anyone who wanted to _avoid_ their attempts at "bubble popping". But maybe the bigger problem is that it's fundamentally hard to get people to behave respectfully in a a global public forum like that.
The only way I've dealt with this is, every couple of years, to unfollow everyone and carefully pick who I follow again in a niche community that is interesting to me at the time.
I don't (apparently controversially) think that a lack of "free speech" is anywhere near top of the list of Twitter's problems. It's way more pressing that the amazing content on it has become completely drowned out by a cacophony of bad actors. It's not just the bot armies, but the legions of individual contributors posting and sharing obvious churnalism and outrage bait that it's _impossible_ to escape from.
I had to stop using Twitter regularly maybe a year or so ago for my own health. I could feel my blood pressure spiking every time I opened the app, and it wasn't because of algorithms or filter bubbles or censorship – if anything, the opposite. It was just increasingly not possible to use it for the things I had always loved about it—breaking news, shared conversations, interesting updates etc. from people and organisations I was interested in—without having to wade through buckets of deliberately rage-inducing shit.
Twitter itself might bear some responsibility for that. The obvious bot problem is out of control, and it was becoming increasingly user hostile to anyone who wanted to _avoid_ their attempts at "bubble popping". But maybe the bigger problem is that it's fundamentally hard to get people to behave respectfully in a a global public forum like that.