One needs to tease apart the effects of Musk and Musk's "policies" on advertising investments, number of users, the boom and slow decline of social media platforms (see Facebook, Instagram coming down from their peak, TikTok gaining ground, but people seem to be already tired of it and waiting for something new) and the technical/technological part of the enterprise.
I don't like layoffs, in particular when I am the one getting laid off (not at X), but the X experience, for a casual user like me, did not get worse, if it did, because there are way fewer people working at X. One may say, I don't like the algos, but that's not coming from a lack of engineers, it is a policy.
Are you not paying attention? X has gotten waaaay worse.
It regularly doesn't load, notifications break, and more.
a lot of the people laid off from X were working on content on things like moderation, and yes, the algorithm
Is the site functional? Sure, I guess. I think the amount of traffic shrinking also has something to do with the viability with fewer engineers