My optimistic outlook for Twitter basically comes down to this: Twitter could be a lot better. There’s more low-hanging fruit than you think. And Elon Musk actually uses and likes Twitter, which makes him a good candidate to fix those problems.

My pessimistic outlook for Twitter basically comes down to this: I’m not sure what Musk’s plans for “light-touch content moderation” will look like. But running a social-media site appears to be something like tending to a garden, except the garden is the size of Australia, and there are alien weeds that grow one foot per second everywhere you look.

I don’t know what Musk will do to change the norms around extremist speech and abuse. But I do think that extremism and abuse will become even more salient under Musk’s leadership, given his reputation. As a result, whether Twitter actually cuts down on abuse, I think we will in the next few months hear more about the abuse that’s always been there. Put differently: Lots of people really hate Elon Musk, and they’re going to be vocally critical of just how awful Twitter is becoming—or always was.