Twitter just handed that and more to a plutocrat.

I'm not seeing why anyone should assume an internet rando is less trustworthy.

Oligarch might be a good term to describe Musk and his ilk, too

How do you expect it to work without that data? :P

Also, I'm _pretty_ sure you can point the twitter API at any user you want to scan followers and following. I did it on some twitter accounts I'm interested in when I started out to find some accounts to follow.

Even protected accounts?

As far as I'm aware, the default state of a protected account is that its tweets can only be viewed by followers, but anyone is free to follow it.

It's also possible to prevent people from following your account without your approval.