Twitter did what was good for Twitter - becoming fun, addictive and compelling to use. People made a choice to use that compelling product. These choices worked out well for Twitter, but according to the GP, not well for the users, who unknowingly hurt their society.
Thank you for the concise summary of GP's post. I think tthe post you're responding to is trying to reframe the point with a question though: are you sure it's actually bad for society? maybe this is how our society communicates and twitter was just an expression of that.
In other worse, it's less that twitter influenced society, and more that society was waiting for the medium to communicate the way it wants.
You might just be 100% correct. I would still prefer the de facto dominating social platforms to enable more meaningful discussions and not promote the sensationalist statements format of "communication" that Twitter offers.
Society definitely responds to media influence. Sadly this is exploited in the wrong direction and rarely if ever for the society's benefit (mostly education).
There is a fallacy that society had a choice. News organizations are struggling for any means to hold readership interest, and twitter's format forces nuanced, complex issues to be shorthanded and misunderstood to readership outrage revenue increasing levels. Just follow the money.
Society doesn't choose the same way one rational might choose, but it definitely chooses. It chose facebook over myspace over not having a social network, for instance.
It's just one popular platform at the moment. If it was IRC, Trump would have his IRC channel. Had Myspace survived long enough (in terms of popularity, that is), he would have a Myspace page.
Politics and companies go where the most people are and use that platform to the best of their own interests. If they don't have the knack for long analytical articles or short witty comments, they just hire people who do.
I think that is something to doubt; IRC was made for discussion and even long winded discussion. That would not work for Trump as far as I can see. The format of Twitter makes discussion hard / impossible. To really create proper reasoning, you need to link a blogpost and most people simply will not click on it.