Just some deranged rich snob who thinks UGC is .. his? Kinda sad if you think about it. People posted on Twitter with the expectation of it being public, not some man's sandbox.
"Temporary" in corpo-speak means permanent if it generates profit and there-were-some-technical-issues if it doesn't, so this is just Felon Muskrat testing the waters.
Right, they will do a cost/benefit analysis to see if the amount of traffic and engagement that they lost cost more or less than what they made or saved by forcing log in.