This is quite right. Musk got caught up in the talking points of free speech on social media and forgot Twitter is an actual user based service business. Now he has way too much money tied up in this blunder and is flailing around trying to figure out how to stay afloat and his solution is to charge the content creators that attract the users that create the value.
Facebook made the same mistake. They were worried too much about the charade that “free speech” is actually allowing idiots to spread false information and lies they allowed their platform to become unattractive.