But wait, when people said they shouldn't censor unpopular or non-mainstream speech due to them being "a global town square", they protested that they were simply a website and people were free to make their own Twitter.
What happened to that? Now all of a sudden it matters that all voices be heard?
The FTC decree isn't related to free speech. It was a part of a settlement the FTC reached with Twitter regarding their mishandling of customer data[1].
The original article is anticipating a messy collision Twitter's legal obligations to the FTC and Musk's inscrutable product development roadmap given the recent employee churn (both layoffs and exits from key roles, e.g. CISO, CPO, & CCO.)
In contrast to what, the impartial journalism of the past[1]? It doesn't serve well to surrender your worldview to the journalistic authority over truth any more today than it did then.
But now, articles like the TechDirt post are extremely verifiable (admittedly, the "anticipating a messy collision" is my own editorializing.) Don't believe Twitter is under a consent order? Go read it[2]. Don't believe their CSIO quit? Go look at their LinkedIn profile[3]
But I suspect your issue is not with the facts of the article, but the motivation behind making this /news/. I'd argue it absolutely is news regardless of the circus surrounding surrounding the acquisition especially if you care about consumer privacy. You can go read the 2011 complaint[4]; TLDR Twitter was super cavalier with non-public consumer data and the FTC was, "Clean this shit up and put a process in place so it doesn't happen again." And it did happen again! This year Twitter paid $150M for using 2FA numbers for ad targeting[5].
So you now have to think: is Musk going to make consumer privacy a priority? Maybe these exoduses are a good thing? Clean house and all. Or maybe he still coming up with a plan while courting advertisers[6] and scrambling for recurring revenue? But that comes back to the original question: even if Musk gave a shit, does Twitter retain the organizational capacity to police itself?
What happened to that? Now all of a sudden it matters that all voices be heard?