Yeah, I've never seen any value in Twitter. They should've called it "Public IM" or limited IIRC and make it function well like IM. Even the poor implementation of threads in Slack is way better than the perverted version of Twitter.
I am not arguing that Twitter is the perfect interface for its content, or even that its content is particularly good. I am just saying that it can have value regardless of its (many) faults.
Apart from being stuck to a single level in depth (which IMHO kind of makes sense in the context of an IM platform), what's that bad about Slack's threads?
Not sure what would you have preferred? I can only think of inline, but I'm not sure how well that would have worked in an IM application, where you'd typically expect things to be in chronological order. You basically described the point of having threads in the first place, and I also cannot think of many other existing implementations, so I'm curious.
But honestly I'd prefer if they spent some fucking time upstaffing their user service and abuse teams. And if they could finally ban Trump and his conspiracy nutcase followers/network.
You shouldn't be so quick to jump to conclusions! To be clear, I'm about as far from "right wing" as one can get. I wasn't aware that standing up for the First Amendment rights of others was a partisan issue, though.
Now, I realize that -- in today's divided society -- I'm supposed to be completely on board with silencing those who hold different opinions or disagree with "our" beliefs ("canceling", I think it's called?) but, well, it just don't work like that.
See, I'm from the rural midwest (a self-proclaimed "country boy"), I drive a big 4WD truck, I ride a loud ass Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and there's three or four times as many guns in this house are there are people. My hometown, my family, my friends, and my acquaintances are all overwhelmingly Republicans -- including some of the people that I love and care for the most in this world -- yet, somehow, I've been a Democrat for my entire adult life.
Contrary to what some folks in "my" party seem to think, however, EVERYONE (still) has the right to their own beliefs and opinions -- and to express them -- no matter how ignorant, ill-informed, asinine, outright stupid, or batshit crazy they may be!
We have a saying around here in "my neck of the woods": I may not agree with what you say but I will fight for and defend to my death your absolute right to say it.
For the record, the only time I've even come close to attempting to "silence" someone or prevent them from exercising their rights has been at funerals -- as a (proud) member of the Patriot Guard Riders.
If there's will, there's a way. Remember how long they've tried to convince themselves that 140 characters is more than enough. Nowadays, even phones display conversations better and combine or split text messages hiding the 160 characters limit from the end user and allow longer than 280 characters texts. Twitter has some nice ideas, but it's mostly a huge missed opportunity.
The character limit was central to making Twitter what it is. Without that limit you'd just have ended up with walls of text and nobody would have been interested. This is a great example of limitations forcing creativity.
The character limit is the defining feature of Twitter.
Maybe for you. I'm not saying having no limit, but a number of words limit is better than a number of characters. They started to revert their _defining feature_ but not counting characters in URLs, etc.
People were supposed to shoot short, simple, single messages and other people maybe react to this with their own short, single messages.