The truth is people can't focus for more than 15 seconds so instead of reading a well researched and deep article or book that might offer sources, nuances, &c. they'll click "like" and "retweet" whoever vomited something that remotely goes their way while ignoring the rest
> If you ignore it and read it as an entire text it is not very different from a regular article or long form comment
It is extremely different as each piece is written as a independent 10s thought ready to be consumed and retweeted. Reading it on threadreaderapp makes it even more obvious, your brain need to work 300% harder to process the semi incoherent flow, some blogs written by 15 years old are more coherent and pleasant to read than this
btw this is what I see on your link, more ads: https://i.imgur.com/rhaXStj.png
Not at all, in my opinion being able to interact with every piece of an exchange allows to dig down into specific points of a debate.
There is a soft stop at the end of every tweet because it's a conversation and not a presentation. It's an interactive piece of information and not a printed newspaper. You can interact during the thread and it might change its outcome.
When you are the person interacting, it's similar to a real life conversation. You can cut someone and talk about something else at any time. The focus conversation will shift for a short moment and then come back to the main topic.
For someone arriving after the fact, you have a time machine of the entire conversation.
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About the link, it is only the first result on Google because I don't use those services and not me vetting for this specific one. I also use ad blockers at all levels (from pi-hole to browser extension to VPN level blocking), so I don't see ads online.
If I go meta for a second, this is the perfect example of how breaking ideas into different tweets can be useful.
Were I to share your comment on its own, it contains that information about a link that is not useful to anyone but you and I.
For someone reading our comments, they have to go through this interaction on the ads and this product. If instead this were two tweets it would have allowed us to comment on this in parallel. If it was HN, imagine if you had made two replies under my comments and we could have commented under each. However, that's the wrong way on this platform.
That is exactly what quoting does, and is older than the web itself.
Oh, look, I have managed to reply to your second paragraph without having to use twatter, how quaint!
Right now, I could make a comment on either your first or second paragraph, or on your entire comment. However, there is no way to determine which category my reply falls into until you have read it entirely. On a platform like Twitter, where there can be up to 100,000 comments on a given piece of content, this is very useful.
Better yet, it allows the author himself to dig down into tangent. In theory, someone could create an account and then have all of their interactions stay on the same tree without ever cutting off. Essentially turning their account into an interconnected "wiki" where everyone can add information.
With enough time your brain no longer registers the metadata around the tweet. If you ignore it and read it as an entire text it is not very different from a regular article or long form comment: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1586955288061452289.html