Only 23% of the US public uses Twitter, and of that 23%, 80% of the posts come from about 10% of those users. These are the numbers I point to when people want to call Twitter the "modern day public square". I don't buy it, and think that the only real significant problem with Twitter is how much credence folks that are on it (including media personalities) give it.

This is true and I bring this up as well BUT consider this: probably less than 23% of US citizens make 90% of the important decisions for this country (the power law still holds) and if all of those people are on Twitter then OP's point still stands. I deleted Twitter about 3 months ago and it's been great. I can just focus on life and talking to my friends still on the platform I realize just how much of a bubble it really is and how most of the issues everyone gets hysterical about is just irrelevant in my life. That being said it seems to hold an insane amount of influence in the minds of journalists, business leaders, and politicians and thus it is an incredibly powerful platform.

I suppose you could say it's like the public square in that only 3 of the 10 citizens in that mythical town actually go to the square and debate/decide anything, and the rest just stay home.

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.

What if most readers think that writers somehow represent a majority of Twitter or even the whole society? That belief, true or false, would leverage the influence of writers.

Sounds like we need to do a better job of explaining why that isn't the case (at least, that is my belief, I believe the most extreme are those most likely to be prolific on Twitter, not those with the most representative beliefs).

I don't think you can't explain that away, it's like fighting the tide.

A lot of us are afraid to post on Twitter because of the woke crowd and cancel culture.

They aren't going away. No matter who buys Twitter, you're still going to get called out for this shithead things you say on the platform. If you're honestly afraid of being cancelled, then you should support current Twitter moderation, as it's saving you from yourself.

You’re making big assumptions here. You assume I want to post shithead things. I’m actually afraid to simply speculate about the world in general. Countless people are being trained to think a certain way and take offense to free thinking. My concern is not only twitter moderation but confident (useful) idiots in general.

Toxic people are still bad, but at least they now can only operate at individual level and not given enough power to harm the society as a whole.

Who is "us"?

And what exactly are you afraid of, someone judging you by what you say?

People have lost their jobs, gotten death threats, had personal information shared, been swatted, and so on when the mob didn't like what you said on Twitter (or Facebook or ...).

And this week a republican running for office put the faces of children who go to a non conventional school in an attack ad on "woke" that has led to them having slurs shouted at them, people trying to get into the school to film etc. etc. How do you prevent the flipside of your point?

There is no "flip side" to my point. My point was that mob behavior is ugly. Doesn't matter if it is a woke mob or a religious mob or a racist mob or any other kind of mob.

You can only pen your honest opinion under your own name if you agree with the heterodoxy of the authoritarian left. This is what passes for liberalism in America today.

> These are the numbers I point to

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.

To me, the fact that petulant bullshit on Twitter and other platforms still makes its way into the real world is even more scary given your numbers. If it was insignificant, I probably wouldn't see people suddenly start burning churches or spray painting ACAB around the neighborhood (at least not so frequently or not so related to completely regionally irrelevant news), or fear that if I say the wrong thing to an overly sanctimonious person I'll get shamed on the internet. Granted, it's maybe not JUST Twitter, but it's a common element that's partially facilitated by Twitter.

I didn't think this was very controversial, but my guess is that people either feel this was irrelevant, they felt personally attacked, or they think I'm exaggerating. For anyone stopping by, all of these things have happened relatively recently, and no I don't necessarily blame Twitter specifically, but news has always been about trying to connect intense emotions with ad revenue, and social media platforms have figured out how to do this at a rate and intensity that's really dangerous.

Twitter is where you can see journalists craft narratives and talking points about news stories in real time. It’s been incredibly revealing imo.

At the very least it does reveal why the narratives constructed by some journalists are so utterly divorced from reality.

I hate reading news in real time. Its never significant or relevant to what you are doing, but you couldn't tell that by the frantic tone and the sense that you must remain tuned into whatever is unfolding this time on the internet. Much better to get the complete picture after the dust actually settles and you know what pieces were truly important.

Can you elaborate on this? Perhaps share some threads or an article summarizing the effect?

Pick any news story and a journalist (from an outlet like NYT, Politico, etc).

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.

I don't know of any good article on the subject, but I think the red/blue war in America is where you can see some of the most extreme examples of this. A simple illustrative example that comes to mind: A politician on the other side of the aisle makes a gaffe, a journalist amplifies the video/text of their statement, based on their followers' reaction a journalist decides if it's something their followers care about and either writes a piece about it with supporting information about just how wrong they are and takes on it from their followers/colleagues or just ignores it and moves on trying to find more red meat for the political partisans that read them.

I've seen this play out time and time again. An environment like Twitter only encourages echo chambers and actively promotes the blocking of content and opinions a person might find inconvenient. If the average Twitter user wants to build themselves a little fantasy land making themselves stupider everyday that's their perogative. But if they consider themselves a journalist it becomes a real problem. Good journalism should have some basis in reality and ideally should involve going out and talking to people. It shouldn't be a work of fiction made to order for a tiny (yet significantly over represented) subset of the population.

Amazing displays of the New York Times A-B testing its copaganda headlines in this thread here:

https://twitter.com/nyt_diff/status/1513873661547143176

That account is dedicated to documenting changes to NYT headlines in real-time.

Because Twitter is great for pushing narratives while silencing "wrongthink".

Twitter (the community, people, concept) is going to exist. Period.

If Twitter (the website / company) was shut down today something else would fill that vacuum almost immediately.

> Can anybody make a good argument as to why Twitter (in its current form) isn’t a major detriment to society?

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.

Science Twitter is a really powerful tool for learning about new papers and being able to discuss with authors directly

The cat is entirely out of the bag. There are many competitors to Twitter (Facebook comes to mind, albeit somewhat different) and the concept of an open online discussion forum, with all its toxicity but also its potential for timely and impactful communication, is not going away. Users have clearly proven they want myriad large scale social media platforms, and Twitter provides a niche and UX that appeals to a lot of people.

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.

Facebook is not a competitor to twitter. It is culturally just a dead space. Nothing interesting happens there, I can't think of the last time an interesting subculture or meme originated on facebook. It's this bizarre place where you're surrounded by old people but at the same time you're subjected to infantilizing speech restrictions that make you feel like you're in some kind of adult kindergarten or something. You can't make fun of journalists or do anything subversive or culturally alive, it's a place where there is no fun allowed.

> 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

I see how this argument would be true. Thank you, that's actually quite insightful.

Not a direct response:

How is this argument any more significant than, "Marshmallows are bad because they rot your teeth, ban them."

Of course a responsible and trustable person like Elon will improve the situation. Hens well known for his balanced and respectful discourse. Come on.

In some parts of the world Twitter has been used to overthrow governments and bring democracy. Check the article on Wikipedia regarding the Arab Spring and how social media played a role. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring

The argument [0] has been made that Twitter was why the US had as good of a response to COVID-19 as it did.

[0]: https://stratechery.com/2020/defining-information/