I'd say... don't give up. Musk is unusual, plus there's a lot of hatred of him simply because he isn't on the left, and has an uncensored mouth (a hazard for those with Asperger's Syndrome).

From my standpoint, Twitter was useful, but it's censorship was deeply offensive, since it strongly favored the left (look at the mass censorship of the true and relevant Hunter Biden laptop story).

So we'll see. Is free speech a dumb idea? Will Musk actually allow it (with reasonable limits)?

I just don't know. But I wouldn't count it out yet. And, I think it would be a shame if people retreated to comfortable ideological bubbles (Mastodon is great for that) where they won't encounter ideas from outside their own group. We have way too much of that already.