It’s more that because of elon’s single-mindedness and pettiness that we can measure his effect on the platform and extrapolate that to other social media. So this would give us a good basis of measurement for the forced memes that big tech companies want us to spread when they aren’t being so obvious.

ELI5 for the 1.2M number:

Hitting 1 million signatures is the final goal but that’s counted after the signatures are verified for legitimacy. With a petition like this, 20 to 30% of the signatures are stricken from the final count. So having a large buffer above the 1 million number is essential.