The Tesla chief just tweeted out some interesting thoughts on what he thinks needs to happen with Twitter itself, writing ... "Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?"

His question was accompanied by a poll, and out of the more than 2 million people that participated ... a little over 70% agreed that Twitter was slippin' on the First Amendment.

EM followed with yet another interesting tweet, adding ... "The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully." 👀

Finally, Elon showed us his cards (ish) by writing that Twitter has, by and large, become the de facto public town square of modern society ... and that if they aren't living up free speech principles, that's seriously hurting democracy as a whole.

Then, he poses yet another interesting query ... "Is a new platform needed?"

Of course, this might remind folks of Donald Trump's recent attempt to start his own social media space, which he's called Truth Social -- and which went live recently. While many right-wing Twitter users were happy to announce its launch, as well as their own new pages, the buzz is ... Truth Social hasn't taken off yet quite like some may have hoped.

Trump himself is said to have barely posted on there ... and some who've hopped on say it's a bit of a digital ghost town, even among some of its most ardent supporters initially. AKA, no one's really using it all that much!!!