Twitter is taking itself too seriously, believing that if it could tweak around the edges, it could improve the quality of the debate in the direction of civility and understanding. Perhaps some nudges and UX changes could encourage these things (I remember a long article about Facebook tweaking their "report picture" function to encourage messaging the person to talk about it before reporting).

BUT

I hate to break it to @jack, but Twitter conversation simply reflects the nature of humanity in an adversarial political system. Attempting to "elevate the debate" will never work, since the debate has never been "elevated." There were no good ol' days of citizen-statesmen calmly discussing their political differences and coming to reasoned conclusions on policy.

No. Politics is always adversarial. As a libertarian, both "sides" of the American political divide feel threatening to me, since all proposals out there are for one form of authoritarianism or another. All proposals involve me giving up a little more of my personal or economic liberty. Will @jack do anything to alleviate my fears that my liberty is being attacked every single day? Probably not.

He's devoted to "collective health and civility," which reads like a 1984 thought-police handbook. Of course, the debate always seems civil after the dissenting voices have been crushed.

(Pre-emptive retort to attack on libertarianism: Yes, I know Twitter is private property. Yes, Jack can do whatever he wants with his business, within the laws for a publicly-traded company.)