I feel like all of this is true, but represents the larger background forces. I think a big factor in why it's hitting relatively hard now is the Musk takeover of Twitter - he laid off a ton of engineers, and nothing much happened. I think that was a shock to much of Big Tech that most of their orgs are really feather-bedded with people who aren't actually doing much to support the core business.
Right wing & foreign disinformation campaigns took over.
He was already trying to end transparency, kick off researchers. Hoarding the wealth of ExTwitter rather than allowing free observation & exploration, like the Twitter days (open society being replaced by cloaked secrecy).
But there's been a bunch of absolutely brutal changes in the recent Terms of Service update. Anyone accessing too many tweets is liable for a 1.5 cent per tweet damages fine according to the ToS. And all disputes are court/forum shopped to a Northern Texas district with particularly right wing & Musk friendly judges, who were trying to strike down ACA judicially.
Technically Twitter seems kind of ok (there have definitely been some uptake of bad outages & foot guns), so your point remains. But driving out and kicking out all the governance & moderation teams and banning research & study has taken much of the light out of the universe, has eliminated the pre-requisites to finding out about and speaking about our local newly emerged online part of the universe. For that destruction of free speech and understanding, I am quite mad.
I still don't think that much of the "orgs are really feather-bedded" idea, and if they are, it's usually the org that can't let its people chase interesting stuff & political logjams or too much top down control. There are plenty of conservative engineers too, but a huge number of engineers love building things, love to boldly venture.
