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The character limit is actually a big problem because it excludes the possibility of expressing any nuanced thought: twitter consists solely of hot takes because that's pretty much the only thing that can be communicated through twitter. Tweetlongs/twitter threads don't really ameliorate this, the content still needs to be structured into short sentences peppersprayed with hot takes that can be retweeted individually.
And then there's the fact that it trains your attention span to hold only for microscopic amounts of time, it is also uniquely bad in this, no other medium in history trained as short an attention span as twitter.
I think being exposed to that for a sufficiently long enough time will make you retarded, so yes more than 280 characters wouldn't make the masses enlightened but it would at least not cause brain damage to them.
And then there's the likes. You can only like a tweet, you can't downvote. If you don't like something you can either ignore it or respond/retweet, which, because of the response limit is going to be a hot take. So when you are on twitter all you perceive is either the hugbox of likes, anyone that disagrees with you is either invisible to you or a troglodite that responds with a short (and from your point of view stupid) "sick burn".
And then there's the fact that celebrities are on it. People who would normally have curated their public persona to a select few manicured communications (think authors, screenwriters, etc) are now absentmindedly putting all of their imbecillity on display, in fact they are using a medium that amplifies it by forcing all nuance in their thought to be expunged. I think the world is substantially worse because of this.
And then there's the moderation, by applying politically biased moderation twitter has created a false consensus on its platform, which skews the perception of what is common knowledge on anyone that interacts with it.
And finally there's the fact that journalists are on it, which means that journalists are now subjected to the mentally retarding effects of twitter, to the false perception of what is common knowledge. They also come to believe that reporting about tweets from politicians and artists is a valid form of journalism therefore amplifying the damaging effects of twitter to the entire population. And because of this they think that sitting at the computer reading twitter is a valid form of work which means they are exposed to more of twitter and more of its deletereous effects.
No other media that existed before or after twitter is as bad as twitter, 4chan is better, reddit is better, instagram is better, tiktok is better, microfilm is better, vellum is better. Literally the worst possible way to communicate ever made.
You can link articles/other long-form content though, and a solid fifth of the articles I read come from twitter links. This gets to my claim that it's more the quality of people - smart people just link stuff & read the links, and dumb people, when they read, do shitty fiction/motivational books/etc.
Attention span doesn't really make sense as a concept tbh, I argued this on reddit but twitter's "attention span" effects aren't at all different than that of casual social conversations, which happen constantly.
There are many, many, many competent professionals who perform at their job better than 99.9% of humanity has for all of history, and use twitter very frequently, and have for years or a decade. Programmers are one of those, but many non-programmers do too. This is just plainly and obviously false.
I constantly see disagreement on twitter though. Quote tweets, replies, just general posts of the form 'this other guy said X which is bad bc Y'. It's usually not useful disagreement, but it's not like the comments sections of major newspapers, or random peoples' long-form writing, are better.
celebrities have always been dumb and said dumb things, that's just not new at all, read a tabloid from the 19xxes or something
False consensus? Mainstream center-right accounts exist and get tons of engagement though? Even if those were downweighted 50%, hypothetically, there's still not a 'consensus'
how is this any different than reporting on random out of context statements from long political speeches or conversations, a mainstay of journalism historically?
at least twitter has some complex and intelligent people, tiktok has none of those. what's a single tiktok account comparable to professional discussion among scientists on twitter, or just @thezvi, or even @rapegroyper14?
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