It was only a “town square” in the minds of Twitter users, no one else thinks that about a news media propped-up social network. If anything it was a comment section attached to nothing. And comment sections all get bad after a while.
There are a lot of public institutions using twitter for their communications.
And they should be utterly ashamed of it. They give it a legitimacy that it has not deserved for years now.
Completely agree, feel the same about facebook et al too.
There are a lot of public institutions not using Twitter for their communications too. Are those institutions not in the “town square”?
Where do they communicate then? How do they reach citizens?
I am genuinely asking, because there are not many ethical ways to communicate, some have mastodon, some have newsletters, but it's a fraction of them and they reach a fraction of the people they reach on Twitter.
Think about your local politician, your local sport club... How do you actually reach people of your town?
Press releases, blogs, podcasts/radio, contacting press outlets, etc. Twitter didn't invent reporting the news, and not everyone gets their news from Twitter. Sorry to break it to you!