Well maybe he realised that in the best case he would govern over Twitter 2.0 with extra toxicity and in the worst case be the proud owner of another cesspool of assholes, pedophiles and people with violent ideas.
I don't believe for a second that Elon Musk really cares about free speech for anyone but himself and he is right now probably not limited by twitter's policy but by other externalities
Pedophiles? I'm pretty sure they would be forced to take down child porn. I mean, it's a public forum. If you are publicly announcing that you are pedophile or terrorist, that sounds like bad news for you.
In any case, does twitter not already have a lot of "assholes" and people with "violent ideas"?
Yes he would (sorry if I went a bit over the top there).
My point being that I don't trust Elon Musk to make better moderation decisions than whoever is in charge right now.
Past attempts of social media with low barriers of what is allowed have absolutely turned out worse than Twitter if you ask me(e.g. 4chan, 8chan, gab etc) That's why I think the best case is "Twitter but more aligned with whatever Elon Musk thinks at the moment"
I don't believe for a second that Elon Musk really cares about free speech for anyone but himself and he is right now probably not limited by twitter's policy but by other externalities