It is not free? You just pay them with your private information and by looking at a few ads. That is not free. Unless you believe information and time have no value?

You need to make an account to access it. That's not free

>I'm not clear what the controversy here is exactly.

Seems pretty obvious, not every citizen has access to twitter, there's no legitimate chain of trust and there's endless potential for corruption and manipulation.

In pretty much every developed country sans the US apparently governments, even local ones, tend to be obligated to publish information through their own channels because 1. they own them so you know communication is authentic, 2. they can't ban or restrict you from accessing it, they know how that information is made available, there's no financial conflict of interest.

It's completely possible for Twitter, given that the government has no insight into its technical operations, exert influence on who sees what and how. That alone is insane for public, government communication. If the government isn't sovereign in respect to its communications infrastructure your government is run by tech oligarchs