In contrast with HN, I find the most salient characteristic of Twitter is that negativity. In the days after the election I started referring to it as the national amygdala. It just became an echo chamber for fear. I mostly solved it by ruthlessly unfollowing people who are just venting their emotions and not engaging in critical thought. I made up for it by following people I disagree with and randomly following people that are followed by people I respect.

The thing I like about Twitter is who you can follow. Where else can you engage with Obama, Trump, etc. in a public forum? Without the big name political users, the press, the public intellectuals, Twitter would have nothing. The way the big shots are effectively equal to ordinary users is very democratic. I can @ the POTUS and at least in theory get a reply. There's nothing else out there that enables that kind of communication.

It's a shame that Twitter has done so little with so much. Think of the great newspapers of the past and how seriously many of them took their civic responsibility, and how they crowed about it in their editorial pages. They understood their role in society and the responsibility that came with the power they had. Yet here Twitter finds itself in possession of an unprecendented opportunity and they totally squander it. Completely oblivious to their social responsibility, they chase after ad dollars, and even there they fail.

The problem IMO is the limits. Humans can only read so many tweets and follow so many people. Beyond Dunbar's number (150 - 1500 depending on selectivity) they just blur into a big mess. Twitter's added some tools for curation (likes, user lists) but they aren't really powerful enough to filter tweets in real-time. They need something like Reddit's automod or a machine-learning filter.

The point of Twitter & other social media is empowering the user; they can encourage community members to step up and take civic responsibility, but Twitter's responsibility as such is to provide the platform rather than to run the show. I guess they could openly declare Twitter to be part of the DNC platform, but that would lose a ton of users (although not so much in terms of content). They're better off following a policy similar to Facebook of attempted neutrality.