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Comment by jusben1369 | Hacker News Reader

Odd. While incredibly flawed it's still the single best toolto fight against censorship and public and private control. If you have doubts go look at how many national governments have blocked it at one time or another. The world is better off with a strong Twitter.

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Saying it like that makes it sound too much like the brand is what is needed as opposed to the tool. To put your words another way: The world is better off with a strong tool to fight against censorship and public and private control.

If Twitter starting taking massive cash payments from governments to filter content, it would be a strong Twitter with lots of cash, but not a strong tool to fight against anything.

But the brand can't be dismissed. The brand attracts users which amplify the reach of the message of an individual. Without the brand and network you're just standing on a street corner with a bullhorn.

It's really just that a strong social media network is needed. Twitter's format works well for this, but I wouldn't be under any delusions that no one would fill the gap that Twitter left. Social media isn't very entertaining unless it capture a significant portion of the market, I'm fairly confident that people would settle on a new service instead of being fractured across a bunch of different social networks. This is a big part of the reason why Facebook and Twitter have lasted so long. There are lots of other companies providing very similar services, I've tried a few, but without friends on there there isn't much of a point.

Yes, but Twitter deserves credit for creating something that didn't exist. It's global IRC for the masses. That and it brought the Internet real-time search. That's huge and did not exist before Twitter.

Well, in the world Twitter was created, maybe it was needed. But that is not the world you live in right now.

> While incredibly flawed it's still the single best toolto fight against censorship and public and private control.

But is it the best because it is better than the alternatives we would have without it is, or is it the best because its dominance in messaging prevents better tools (in terms of "the fight against censorship and ... control") from being developed or gaining traction and critical mass -- e.g., is the goal you point to really being served by a strong Twitter, or held back by it?

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