I've spent years mocking Twitter for it's short character limit (designed IMO for the low-attention-span trend) and the siloizing/bunkering effect of Facebook and groups (where never a contrary opinion is tolerated, much like with many of Reddit's subreddits). As an experiment I created a Twitter account for the first time when Musk took over the platform.
It's not terrible but not great either - there are some decent sources of information and interesting accounts to follow, but the search function is still very poor, and there's what feels like a lot of algorithmic optimization of engagement going on. Finding interesting and informationally accurate accounts to follow is a bit of a struggle, but once you do it's not too bad. I doubt it was drastically different in the past.