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scaredtobeme | 5 years ago

The argument is that it's getting there. It's the leading platform for public debate in the US right now. Journalists spend their days refreshing their Twitter feed, so the effect isn't just in the size of Twitter's platform but its influence.

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eximius|5 years ago

Twitter is a plague on public discourse. We'd be better off as a society if it were never invented. If I knew how to put the genie back in the bottle, I would advocate for it.

sytelus|5 years ago

It’s absolutely not. I don’t follow anything political, neither Obama nor Trump. Among 1200+ people I follow are all from AI/ML/biotech/space research. Most of them are academics. I throughly enjoy my feed and it’s my go to place to stay up to date as well as some fun nerdy conversations. Tweeter is a hammer, use wisely.

baq|5 years ago

it's easy enough - make it a paid-for service and regulate - read ban - free versions.

not going to happen because apparently people paying with their attention instead of dollars in manipulative ways is just fine. the argument goes that they can always not read it, but that's a false dichotomy in social networks and why i'd like to see twitter, google and facebook get labeled as utilities.

qchris|5 years ago

I'd love to be a fly on the wall when a legal team responsible for supporting this narrative has to tackle the issue of regulating the platforms as a public utility, but not the Internet providers that carry them.

riffic|5 years ago

There have been people making these arguments both for and against for a very long time. Even as an example, on this very site:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I think you'll quickly lean in the opposing view after reviewing those viewpoints, because if Twitter was a utility it would have been declared one at some point in the previous 11 years.

baq|5 years ago

how long did it take to break up standard oil? ma bell?