It's easy to project your hopes and dreams onto a person when you discount the meaning of their literal words and replace them with your own biases. I have no illusions that Musk's own conception of "free speech" is not just as qualified and diminished as what Twitter offers. If Musk had a legitimately impressive adherence to the principles of free speech, backed by deed, that would be one thing. If he could put his money where his mouth is in literally any other context, that would be a data point. But Musk's record on free speech is the opposite; he often uses the legal system as well as his own wealth to exert pressure which is anti-free speech. To be clear I'm not saying he is wrong to do this, but he's wrong on the basis of free speech. Indeed, Musk is very keen to restrict the speech of others when he feels that speech harms him. That's reasonable, but not principled.

Taken as a whole, to me this just indicates that Musk is not a free speech absolutist but instead a fair-weather supporter of free speech; he's for free speech when it works for him, but also anti-free speech when it works for him. This makes him no better or worse than anyone else IMO, but it certainly doesn't make him the standard bearer of free speech.

However, the thing that does make him worse than everyone else is that he lies about it. He calls himself a free speech absolutist knowing full well the meaning of those words. He's trying to paint himself as a champion when in fact he's not, which makes him either delusional or a manipulative liar. Either way, he shouldn't be the one at the helm of Twitter, if the rationale is that it would be a boom for free speech. It would just be more of the same. Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.