But the digital town square Musk is envisioning might not materialize because Twitter has never lived up to its goal of being a marketplace of ideas. More than that, Americans seem to dislike the social media platforms that forgo content moderation entirely, with anything-goes platforms never being quite as popular as the larger platforms that limit some of what users see. A town square that is a free-speech free-for-all risks becoming the kind of place that few people want to visit, which serves as its own limit on the kind of speech it fosters…

So if Twitter seems like a place where random funny thoughts or outrageous statements go viral and quickly become the topic of the day, there may be evidence for that. It’s in this way that Twitter turns conversations into kind of a game, with likes and other metrics that amplify the feeling of winning or losing, and so the people on Twitter are those who like to play that game.

The average Twitter user is younger, more highly educated and wealthier than the average American adult, and is also likelier to identify as a Democrat. That’s especially true of very active Twitter users, who also post heavily about politics. These users are slightly likelier to say that immigrants strengthen American society and to see evidence of societal bias against women.