Between this and the blue-check thing it's like he doesn't get that the primary draw of the site is high-volume posters and/or famous people who(se PR teams) post. Like, ease of finding and reading (plus interacting with—responding, rewteeting, et c) posts by famous (or at least Internet-famous) power users is the main reason Twitter's a bigger draw than, say, Mastodon. If people just wanted to read their non-famous pals' posts, they could do that on any chat app.
It'd be like YouTube charging top creators for access (sure, the blue checks aren't "access", but they're a huge discovery-aid and solve problems for Twitter) then also cutting off any 3rd-party tools those creators use to make their jobs easier, which would obviously be a giant WTF. Why on earth would you make things more difficult for the very people providing the content that makes your site worth anything to begin with!
> just wanted to read their non-famous pals' posts
I suspect Elon lives in a bubble where all of his friends are famous or highly desirable in some way. He doesn't understand that most people's friends _aren't_ a brand.
As the "author" of some 80,000+ tweets (can't find number anymore), their mobile app was unusable. I've been on TweetBot for close to 10 years I think. TweetBot2 was my first mobile twitter client iirc.
No more mobile twitter for me. Shame. But probably better this way. It really hasn't felt like a fun place for the last 3 or 4 years. More like a cigarette habit you can't shake.