Why I can’t have conversations using Twitter (2014)
Tech design choices can have profound social impact.This is just a personal theory, but I suspect Twitter's choices have done huge damage to Western Civilization, by forcing, as a medium, a very short 'soundbite' structure onto debate. (Even more so than the media which gave us the term 'soundbite' ever did!)So that sounds like a very overblown assertion, right?But think about Trump. Twitter is his platform, and arguably he is the sort of President a platform like Twitter most directly enables. He gets direct unchallenged access to a mass medium, a mass medium which makes it particularly hard to counteract false claims or have reasoned debate. For exactly the issues Antirez is raising.I don't have evidence to support my theory, all I can say is I don't think I want Twitter to succeed.