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Comment by cdubzzz | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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