Plausible.
However, I would say that a related, more general, and more disturbing hypothesis (in the "big picture") is more plausible:
Musk is all-in with China, Saudi Arabia, etc. For various reasons - access to markets, financing, etc. Some of those who left Twitter shortly after the bad deal he made was force-consummated, suggested that it might be far less safe for, say, Saudi dissidents to use the platform than it was prior to his takeover (and, there were "incidents" and indications of incidents before he took over, already).
I'd suggest that he has some general directive(s) in place for what to do about certain kinds of potentially sensitive tweets. His claims about "free speech absolutism" are interesting, in the use of the word absolute (think "L'État, c'est moi") and subsequent statements about "following the law" and the resultant behavior.
And, of course, his little trolincel fans are the perfect little army of toadies for these kinds of totalitarian governments... just waiting to denounce any "enemies of the people" (i.e., flag tweets so they may be passed on to House of Saud, CPC [CCP], etc.).
Edit: It's easy to see that this makes all of the craziness we've witnessed with Twitter, since the takeover, look less crazy. With this as a backdrop. That is: the bad deal is already done, but, some of the rationale and goals can still be salvaged.
So, come in, get rid of anyone with a conscience, more experienced, more independent. Have NDAs in place (par for the course already, at "MuskInc", good cover), and a set of foreign indentured servants. The environment is perfectly transformed to extract THIS kind of value from the whole clusterfck. Plus, Elon gets to build his mythos further in multiple ways, including fostering further disgust in "his enemies". And, if / when it all crashes down, well, at least we disrupted all those communities, independent journalist-types, etc.