I didn’t realize HN would have people make the ludicrously stupid “well just build your own Twitter” argument

Figured we had a more high brow audience here clearly I was mistaken

That's not what I meant by "building your own networks" - was referring to the traditional ways of building networks before the internet was even a thing. Arguing that Twitter has some sort of magical status as the ultimate channel for broadcasting your opinions to the world strikes me as absurd. I barely use it, and when I do it's not to read opinions (I only subscribe to institutions/organisations that use it to broadcast important information). Pretty sure most people I know would say the same.

Twitter has a significantly bigger audience than every other channel combined. It’s like saying who cares if you’re banned from tv, radio and telephones, just send carrier pigeons like the old days

This is classic HN “introverted programmers don’t use it so clearly it’s worthless”. The “normies” aren’t on HN or IRC or browsing your obscure forum - they’re on Twitter and that’s it.

Numbers to back that up? Just googled and Twitter seems to have a pretty modest market share compared to FB. And I don't know how you'd compare it to other channels that aren't classified as social media (including non-digital ones).