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The Internet was going to be an instrument for elevating discourse.

Twitter turned it into the opposite with the 140 character limitation.

Who at any point in the development of the internet ever expressed a goal to elevate discourse?

Twitter is not the Internet.

In fact, we're on the internet now, on a website that serves as an instrument for elevating discourse with its community standards!

A web site whose influence is over a much smaller portion of the public.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ has impeccable standards and more than half a million subscribers, just as one other example.

@ocschwar probably meant that twitter - being a single though admittedly big actor on the internet - didn't help in raising the level of discussion on the internet...At least that's what i interpreted.

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