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Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

Twitter was founded as a micro-blogging service, not a forum. It evolved into the anonymous comment section for the entire internet somewhere along the way.

Seems like neither side were being self aware in this case.

I'm also not sure exactly what the product problem is with Twitter. The only exposure I have to a group of people upset about Twitter are the folks that Joe Rogan had on his podcast, and their complaints are just that it's toxic.

However Twitter unlike Google and Facebook is the least functional as a utility, so refraining from using it if you don't like it seems like a no brainer. You're not losing anything functional

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That’s not entirely true. Twitter launched at SXSW, and people who were there can tell you that it was primarily used to build on the fly chat rooms during each session.

Speakers would define the hash tag at the start, and then many would project the post stream up front and respond to questions or comments from the feed on stage. The audience would also discuss what was being said amongst themselves.

It’s really just too big and too public for that to work anymore. It almost needs a feature where posting to a certain hashtag requires a password or being a certain user, then the 2 of them could’ve posted to that hashtag exclusively and been the only thing in the feed, and easily followed.

Obvious problem there is that hashtags don’t really scale like that, but it gives you some sense for strategies they might take to tackle the issue.

So, basically it's exactly like IRC! Only instead of your client sending PRIVMSG #channel-name :YOUR MESSAGE HERE, you have to type the channel name yourself every time... and there's only one server that doesn't federate... and there's an absurdly short message limit...

...this is better somehow?

Don’t you think the inherent design — “microblogging” — encourages a toxic environment? Most people aren’t poets or great writers, so I just frequently see people talking past each other or misreading what has been said because there is zero nuance.

I'm not sure the design is responsible for much of that. I see plenty of people on Reddit and this very site who talk past each other and skip straight over the nuance when it is presented. I also see favoritism shown to the "sound bite"-style comments over the thought out ones, particularly on contentious issues.

I agree it's present in any kind of dialogue where people assume the worst of others, but Reddit at least allows unlimited text. Same with this site -- I've seen many reactive comments, but then a thread resolves it and everyone reaches a good place. I've seen similar on Reddit, although less so compared to here.

I don't think I've ever seen the same on Twitter, ever. It usually devolves into something worse.

I do think there are parallels between Reddit and Twitter that encourage a level of snark that is just never appropriate when talking to a human in real life, unless you know them well.

I wrote a whole thing making that very argument: https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/

Great read, this perfectly expresses how I see it. I really like the "medium is the message" idea, haven't heard that before, but it definitely makes sense.

It's why the "happy birthday" messages in Facebook have always felt so hollow (especially because facebook is really nudging you to do it), but those same words sent via text message to the person are received differently (or even via Messenger within Facebook).

The criticism is something like Twitter enables the worst in humans, it's a platform that can unjustly destroy one's character and career. From a product perspective, its working. Yet it is still a net negative, at least that's the claim.

When someone is being doxxed, and mobs are forming, it's usually happening on that platform.

The whole reason Jack and Ev feuded was over what they thought Twitter should be. Jack thought it was a better version of status messages on AIM. Ev wanted it to be a blog platform like blogger.

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