I imagine I'll get downvoted for this, but I think it needs to be said. Perhaps one way to lessen the spread of misinformation is to not operate services that limit messages to 280 characters. The world is not black and white. Meaningful topics are almost always nuanced and do not lend themselves to pithy sound bites. Let me demonstrate my point in a provocative way:

===== The world would be a better place if Twitter did not exist. =====

Note the lack of caveat, nuance, or elaboration here. It's not conducive to making the argument in a compelling and convincing way, especially not in the ways espoused by Hacker News. People who agree with that statement are going to agree. People who don't are going to be outraged.

If you do agree with the above the real question is what to do about it. Does the problem lie with the people at Twitter? With capitalism? With democracy? With the particular implementation that is the United States? Is this just something inherent to human nature? Or is the internet to blame? There are no simple answers to these questions. But perhaps the mediums that we use to have the discussions have a substantial impact on the conversation.