I think that Twitter is an anomaly that shows the strength of the architecture they built. Certainly you don't need those people around to keep the lights on, but if you want to attract new users with new features, someone needs to design those to work at scale, and then implement them. As far as I can tell, X has basically added subscriptions since the acquisition. In the meantime, they've lost many users and advertisers. (I only see ads for drop-shipped crap, which probably isn't too profitable compared to someone like Disney.) It is very unclear whether this is sustainable for X; as tech debt accumulates and real debt becomes due, the situation could be pretty dire. With equity you are strongly encouraged to grow. With debt you have to grow faster than the interest payments or you're literally dead. It is unclear to me whether or not X is growing; a lot of people are at the very least supplementing X with Bluesky and Mastodon. (They say they've moved away, but I kind of doubt it.)

Musk would probably be the last person on Earth to admit that X isn't doing so well, so I wouldn't really trust him. The most insightful thing he's said is "Fuck you, Bob Iger" which doesn't sound particularly indicative of advertising success. Meanwhile, he's advertised X payments, X email, etc. and these have not materialized (much like "FSD is a year away" in ... 2017).