What Musk proposes is not taking away Twitter’s ability to regulate content on its platform but rather to disinfect that process by dragging Twitter’s inner workings out of the shadows and into the sunshine.

There is plenty to criticize about Twitter, which is the vast open sewer of our public life. And there is plenty to criticize about Elon Musk, too. I do not think that Musk is likely to make Twitter any worse than it already is, because I do not think that is possible: The basic architecture of Twitter — anonymity, immediacy, the way a following is built — ensures that Twitter brings out the worst in its users. Twitter rewards hysteria, performative outrage, and tribalism, and has very little use for thoughtfulness, nuance, or consensus-building. A good version of Twitter simply would not be Twitter.

Watching Elon Musk take on Twitter is like watching a hockey game or sitting through the Oscars: The beatdown will be the fun part, no matter who wins.