I’d add a minor item to the list: it is progressively raising garden walls. I do not have a twitter account, I will not give my mobile number to twitter to get one. Right now I can still follow the few accounts I find interesting with nitter and browser favorites. The twitter website itself has become unusable.

Twitter is not the defacto public square. Only "New York Media Types" believe this.

> 1. It has a free speech problem. The defacto public town square doesn't believe in free speech!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...

Before labeling "problems" I wish people would define what is the ideal social platform? What are the qualifications and rules everyone must follow for a "speech" to be free of unequal censorship?

Yup, pretty much all of these are true.. for a lot of the new net and all of SM.. but especially twitter.

> The defacto public town square doesn't believe in free speech!

Twitter is not “the defacto (sic) town square”. The claim that it is is most typically deployed as an argument that it should be regulated. The rest of this comment continues apace. These are standard talking points in the (right wing) drumbeat to try and curtail free speech by regulating Twitter (and other social media companies).

1. Twitter has a terms of service, and advertisers don't want their adverts next to hate speech. 2. there are SO MANY right wing people on twitter, tweeting away merrily. They adhere to the Terms of Service. 3. Once again, I mostly see that coming from accounts with a certain political bent 4. Fair

I follow links onto twitter sometimes, though I dont use it. how does it have a "free speech problem?" what does this even mean in practical terms. I think that talking point is completely made up.

Hm, #1 and #2 here just seems like a copy/paste of a conservative talking point.

You're literally in the middle of a discussion about how Twitter isn't the "de facto" public town square, because nearly nobody actually authors original tweets.

In any event, fuck the public town square. That's where slaves were sold, that's where gay men were stoned, that's where people were hanged for all manner of terrible reason that had nothing whatsoever to do with justice.

Twitter, as awful as it is, is many orders of magnitude better than the town square. May we never return to those times again.