Thread · 3 tweets · 25 Dec 2017

Many excellent points in this essay, but I feel an important question is missing: if Twitter genuinely becomes a media platform, where will the sense of community migrate to? Twitter's lineage is forums, mailing lists, IRC, NNTP... A place incompatible with mediation.

I won't lament the abuse (that was a fixture of all these platforms), but there is something in the clunkiness of emergent conventions that creates a sense of worldwide community. The lack of curation (algorithmic or not) yields unlikely but enriching encounters.

Why do these go together? Can we create a sense of community that does not reinforce in-groups? Can we have serendipitous encounters without abusive randos? Twitter's reorientation towards media is a collective failure to address these questions. Merry Christmas!