It was publicly owned....not one individual.

The only reason I even knew who Jack Dorsey was was from podcasts talking about him. Elon's tweets show up in my feed regularly, and sometimes are even pushed to my phone, despite not engaging with them and even explicitly pressing the "show less" button. (I also get push notification from conservative accounts, despite being what most of them would call "far left")

Why would you ever allow push notifications from any social media? And on X you can still mute or block individual accounts that you don't want to see.

That isn’t the point of this entire thread, though. It’s about what the default is, because like it or not, most people are crazy susceptible and have practically zero media literacy.

Well ultimately all centralized sites are someone's -- some person, or some company.

The previous incarnation had its own biases and such, but it did try to run a little more like a real company with official policies. The current incarnation is whatever Elon's mood this second happens to be.

Don't be naive. The previous management also used their power to promote their preferred narratives in arbitrary and capricious ways with no regard for fundamental principles and no accountability. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.