If Twitter poofed out of existence today, it would be a major win for this planet. People talk about a frightening future with a human hostile AI that wants to destroy humanity. That exists, it’s twitter.
Elon buying it, even if he runs it into the ground is a good thing. Getting rid of some of the hostile AI is a good thing.
But I'm not convinced the folks on Twitter truly have that much power because they have those discussions on Twitter (and most would probably have that power whether Twitter exists or not and the discussions on Twitter from those in power seem to be mostly just an extension of their other media presences). It does make some folks more accessible, and their (curated) thoughts more public in some cases.
I've spent some time recently to curate who/what I follow on Twitter to be more relevant and less hysterical (it still creeps in tho), and that has actually made me more likely to actually engage there now, as it's often with things I'm actually interested in.
And what exactly are you afraid of, someone judging you by what you say?
IDK, that sounds like more participation (in speaking and listening) than I'd expect out of a literal public square, although not by a whole lot.
I remember coming across street preachers on the Santa Monica promenade. I want to say 10-20 people would stop to listen, where 1-2 people would be speaking (preacher and a possible commenter). I don't even know how to estimate how many people simply walked by, but the audience being less than 20% of that sounds very likely.
TL;DR Anecdotal experience in one actual public square, estimates less than 20% of the physically present public participating, and less than 10% of that speaking.
Watch the timeline of that journalist's original opinions (and their level of aggression/assertiveness) and then watch how that cascades to either more extremism—if the evolution of the story agrees with their chosen narrative—or, to absolute abandonment of/ignorance of the thing they so fervently held an opinion about a few hours earlier.
Once you start observing this behavior, you will see it happen for nearly all stories. It's like watching rats press a lever to release food pellets and then scattering off to a corner to digest.
https://twitter.com/nyt_diff/status/1513873661547143176
That account is dedicated to documenting changes to NYT headlines in real-time.
If Twitter (the website / company) was shut down today something else would fill that vacuum almost immediately.
Basically no one actually uses twitter. I only know one person in real life who uses twitter.
Twitter's problem is that 'media types' really like twitter, for one reason or another, and tend to blow everything that happens there out of proportion for off-platform engagement.
Personally, I really like twitter. I carefully curate my Twitter experience to follow people I'm interested in, mute people and words I don't care for (it's great never having to see "NFT" on twitter!), and block people who are actively harmful. I'm left with a pretty positive experience that has good community and funny jokes. That's how I use it.
You can argue that people are stupid and these platforms are detrimental to society. This is entirely subjective. I would argue that attempting to kill such platforms would be more detrimental, as it will push people to decentralized platforms that are even worse echo chambers. So this is a story of lesser of two evils.
I see how this argument would be true. Thank you, that's actually quite insightful.
How is this argument any more significant than, "Marshmallows are bad because they rot your teeth, ban them."