I don't find Twitter any more or less toxic than any other platform, and it's because I'm free to participate in the communities I choose. If the people you follow are constantly talking politics, and that annoys you, why are you following them?

This is a very presumptuous response.

A more charitable interpretation might just be where discussions are happening that you're not interested in on twitter. For example, 'this person keeps getting embroiled in twitter arguments about covid', so I'm going to unfloow them because even though I agree with their opinions, I'm not interested in the inevitably heated and pointless discussions leaking into my timeline.

> suddenly you're a Trump supporting alt right conspiracy theorist.

Maybe it's how you use language and not the idea?

Saying that Twitter should be held accountable for illegal content is fairly agreeable, even if it's a huge burden.

Exactly. They should have left years ago since Twitter has always been an outrage machine and a bot laden cesspool riddled with CP spreading on the site. Still, many refused and tolerated the peak outrage for decades with no change.

Those who want more extreme content like that are free to go to their own federated echo chambers if they want to. Just not on Twitter anymore.

What % of the userbase is "Twitter cesspools" and how do you define that? What exactly is a "Twitter cesspool"? Viewpoints that don't align with yours? Radical politics?

Is Twitter the platform of giving the 10-20% most fringed members of both political parties a voice? Why does what they post get "upvoted/liked/retweeted" enough to the point where it gets visibility instead of being drowned out? What kind of content are they posting exactly that is "ok" to not be removed by moderation policies, but you define it as "cesspool" material?

The difference being that on Parler the 'cesspool' as you call it is all there is, or at least it is the main attraction.

On Twitter it is easy enough to find, but an average user mostly does have to go looking for it, or at least be following someone who goes looking for it. Twitter also does make efforts to drain the cesspool, although it can certainly be debated whether those efforts are sufficient or even being made in good faith.

Obviously the people who use it think it's worth using. Either way, the point isn't how bad Twitter is in your personal opinion, the point the author rightly makes is that it will get worse.

Interesting. I see it as the de-facto journalist platform, which to me (as a non american) make it very left leaning. But then again, I don't use X.

So good thing they're trying for a change?

That doesn't mean I agree with their moderation as a whole but they seem to have tried to do the right thing here

Yes and no. There's too little moderation in some areas and way too much in other areas.

If you follow conservative politics, someone can say something like "men are women are biologically different" and they'll have their account banned for a catch-all "hate speech" violation. Meanwhile, someone can say "Trump should be assassinated", and get thousands of retweets and no administrative action.

Case in point, Trump is still banned from Twitter for tweeting "go home in peace and love", yet Putin, the leader of a country we're currently in a proxy war against, still has a verified account.

Bottom line, Twitter is an irredeemable toxic cesspool full of both propaganda and massive censorship.

I really don't see a problem with having an internet scale public bathroom wall for people to scrawl all over. Sure, Twitter is mostly spam and garbage, but so what? Every comment, however useless/offensive/entertaining/banal/silly/poetic/helpful/etc that isn't breaking the law isn't really a problem and no one is forcing you to read it.

I don't have much trouble ignoring Twitter entirely most of the time and the main issues I have with it aren't even about Twitter itself but with how people try to use it for things it is poorly suited for. It's the "journalists" who copy/paste tweets then call that an article I take issue with. Twitter is absolutely no place for presidential records, and shouldn't be the only place for any kind of important or official notification, or the only way to reach a company to get customer service.

There are certainty far better platforms for blogging, but lots of people like Twitter and find it useful. I don't see why Twitter should go away.

Reddit has similar problems

> What Reddit does right is focus on topics, primarily, not personalities.

This is an advantage for twitter in many ways, people want to follow and interact with other credible people not with a bunch of random people with no credible experience discussing a topic on reddit

Not Twitter has the problem, society has. Twitter is growing fine on its own, there is no end in sight. But the platform is more and more influencing the rest of the world, and usually it's more of the toxic than healthy kind of influence.

Donald Trump is free to do what you think they should not.

> It's what Twitter exercises when it decides what content and content sources to relay.

And now Twitter is doomed to fail.

> Free speech isn't an entitlement to someone else's resources to amplify your speech.

"Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The term "freedom of expression" is sometimes used synonymously but includes any act of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used." [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

He certainly does not want to encourage conversation.

>Twitter has absolutely no way for me to share with others that someone isn't a person I want in my communities;

It seems that what this person wants is that everyone he talks to think like he does. That's not a community, that's an echo chamber with no disagreeing, no joking, no comments.

It's okay if he doesn't like Twitter and doesn't want to use it, but wishing for it to go away makes me uncomfortable. Why should he care if others use Twitter ? I, for one, am happy with Twitter being alive even though I don't use it.

Without it sounding like an endorsement or defense of the guy… I never would have believed without seeing it, just how furious this made the media and other politicians. That you have a guy come in who said forget the system, I’m going talk to the people directly (and say some dumb things now and then).

I still attest that some of the Trump hate is solely because groups of people that control the narrative in the US were excluded from creation and forced to be on narrative-adjustment.

Agreed, this isn’t a good place. One platform should not have this level of influence.

You don't need to be an absolutist to be pretty disgusted with Twitter censorship.

I'm not sure how they could pull it off, but if Twitter wants to be a real town hall for the world then these are the things that DO need to be removed.

But if twitter wants to be the place were anyone can scream into the void, then they can't do this.

The weird thing is, I want both. My favorite part of twitter is both of these things.

My experience of Twitter is the opposite. Someone I follow posts something I think is intelligent and polite, and the replies are filled with people launching tangential attacks and making weird accusations.

A tweet is like a tiny conference talk whose attendees are self-selecting. Yet random strangers all over the world are able to detect the in-progress talk, parachute in, and yell crazy things, and nobody can take away their microphone.

> It's sad that Twitter is banning satire accounts. I'm against all censorship of lawful speech, and condemn Twitter and any social media platform that participates in this kind of censorship.

Would you distinguish satire from impersonation? Eg, https://twitter.com/RealDonalDrumpf?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7... is clearly self-identifying as a satire of Donald Trump. Nobody is going to confuse that account with the real one.

But suppose hoards of people with political opinions you detest start creating accounts that pose as "your side", using the worst possible arguments for your positions, insulting everyone, and making "your side" look stupid and cruel. Is that a kind of speech you want to protect?