For people who like encountering new ideas and even debating them, Twitter has become the last social platform where words take priority over selfies, if not over self-aggrandisement. Unlike LinkedIn, nobody is “humbled” or “privileged”. Unlike Instagram, it’s more than pets and pouts. Unlike Facebook, people still use it. When it works well, it provides an opportunity to engage with others on a wide range of topics. Lonely people find community. Curious people are exposed to different perspectives. Movements are started. Some people like it so much they even hack in through ministers’ accounts to watch porn.

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Musk, who has described himself as a “free speech absolutist” is unusually passionate about the opportunities that Twitter provides to create a “digital town square” in which a wide range of ideas can be debated important for civilisation’s future. It’s undoubtedly important for civilisation to find a way to be civil.

Now that Netflix and the new puritanism has killed the appointment pub night, there are fewer and fewer spaces in which the price of a beer will buy you great conversation. Without a global town square, we become intellectual villagers. There have been a number of attempts to replace Twitter. Platforms have been started that cater to the “right” or the “left”, allowing them to hang out with like-minded people. The failure of these platforms to catch on is a reminder that conversation is boring when everyone agrees. Twitter is toxic but would no Twitter be better?

Free speech has consequences, as the Twitterati likes to say. But the “consequences” delivered by the online mob were too often the type of consequences meted out by schoolyard bullies. Now instead, in one corner of the internet, free speech will come with a price tag. Maybe Musk is onto something. Maybe if we’re lucky he’ll take on email next. Maybe in the online world, free speech needs to cost something to be worth anything.