[supremesaboteur]

> 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

This is actually not true. Many of Trump's claims are challenged on Twitter and outside of Twitter. Maybe you don't like that he can directly talk to the people rather than twist his words to suit your narrative before heading it over to the masses

[subpixel]

Just yesterday I looked at Twitter to read up about a back and forth between two developers I respect. I was reminded that Twitter makes it well-nigh impossible to follow multiple sides of a conversation. (Of course, calling what happens on Twitter a conversation is a stretch to begin with.)

Much of the time, when a tweet says that it's 'in reply to' someone else, the specific tweet it was meant as a reply to is not displayed to third parties.

If you extend this experience to the Trump scenario, it's a total fantasy to think his followers on Twitter are being exposed to rebuttals of his statements.

You see counter-opinions if you follow the person who expresses them. It's the inverse of discourse, and I agree it's cancerous to civil society.

[ygaf]

I never got started with twitter, because it just didn't make sense, without a bit of practice using it at least. Thanks for confirming it is a general mess.

[acdha]

> Maybe you don't like that he can directly talk to the people rather than twist his words to suit your narrative before heading it over to the masses

It's telling that you chose to twist the original poster's words to suit your narrative with the least fair interpretation. Unchallenged doesn't mean that something gets edited to bits. Traditionally it just meant that, for example, a reporter would ask followup questions to expand an idea or attempt to get the subject to explain things they'd prefer not to discuss (e.g. “How will we pay for that?”), or that controversial claims would be presented with a response from a relevant expert.

Trump is obviously unwilling to submit his ideas to critical review (or even basic editing) and in that sense Twitter is perfect for him. He can hit send and millions of his followers read it without any barrier where someone says “uh, doesn't that contradict what you said last week?”.

[Certhas]

Sounds a bit like: "Just give me the facts and let me make up my own mind."

This is a stupid attitude. This should not even need elaborating. There are always more facts pertinent to the situation than any one of us can process. We will almost never have the correct background to correctly understand and interpret the facts.

Some people voted for Trump because he "tell's it as it is" when he has been lying demonstrably over and over.

I would rather have a journalist (or five) report to me what Trump said, together with context that makes it meaningful, and pointing out when he is lying. For the same time invested that will give me a vastly superior understanding of the situation than reading him directly.

I'm sure we'll figure out how to have a meaningful public discourse within the context of the Internet eventually, but as it was when other technologies came about, those who are fundamentally interested in _not_ having a reasonable discourse that is listened too, but want to get their superficially plausible demagoguery heard are having their field day right now.

[cvsh]

Yeah it's less because of places where news spreads among the savvy like Twitter (and Reddit, and niche communities like HN) and increasingly more about the "last mile" of news -- the increasingly fragmented and ethically unconstrained ecosystem where people actually hear news from.

Facebook is, in my mind, much more culpable, being at the point of the spear for the radicalization of last mile news delivery.

[sddfd]

They are challenged, true.

But does this impact his tweets?

More importantly, I do not think Twitter is a good platform to present a statement /together/ with its challenges.