There was a great article I've never been able to find again about how the UI of Twitter naturally guides users into de facto bullying, and most of the advice given by experienced Twitter users (e.g. check existing replies to a tweet before adding your own) is working around UI choices made by the system itself.

I wonder how many of those bully-inducing UI features are also present in software like Mastodon or Diaspora, and are therefore disasters-in-waiting, to be triggered once critical mass of users is reached.

Was it this one? https://web.archive.org/web/20180801143131/http://www.shamus...

(archive link because the site seems to be down at the moment)

It wasn't, but that's a good article on the same topic. The one I was thinking of was focused more on low-level details of the twitter UI.

Depends on what the goal is.

300 characters incentivizes driveby remarks rather than articulate conversations.

Twitter also has really bad content enforcement. Not inherent to the format, but it's worth consideration in the interest of practicality.

Who has time and energy for articulate conversations over the internet? What do we want, a social network for the few?

Usenet was fun while it lasted. But september will probably never end.

In fact, it's about to start.