>”Prioritized rankings in conversations and search: Posts that you interact with will receive a small boost in their ranking. Additionally, your replies will receive a boost that ranks them closer to the top. Subscribers will appear in the Verified tab within other users’ notifications tab which highlights replies, mentions, and engagement from Premium subscribers.”

A lot of the issues these people mentioned is that they paid for this reach and previously received it. This decision is another in a long series of secret algorithm changes that are effectively unannounced policy changes.

Also the “freedom of speech” thing is not really true either. Elon makes grand promises about not banning any legal content, but then does things like institutes very personal censorship rules, like deciding “cis” is a slur and saying it is a bannable offense. I’ve known many people who’ve been banned for using the word in an otherwise mild-mannered post.