Twitter, at least, is utterly worthless and entirely voluntary. Nobody uses the platform to announce or coordinate family events or to reach out to loved ones when they need help. I have a mostly inactive facebook account in case family messages me on there and I need to help out - I don't have a twitter account because I don't find brigading to be a worthwhile activity. I'd say with a moderate level of confidence that nothing that's announced on twitter has ever been vital to know - if Whirlpool is forced to recall a certain dishwasher brand they'll send out emails and potentially physical letters - no government agent is going to watch them tweet and say "Yup - you just informed the public in a responsible manner".

I completely disagree. There are entire fields of academia where effectively the only discussion being held outside of papers is on twitter.

Twitter, by a large magnitude, has been the most professionally useful social network to me as a knowledge worker/researcher.

Isn't twitter an extremely inefficient way to convey technical information? Why hasn't your specialty broken out a self-hosted forum or even, I guess, a heavily moderated subreddit?

In my, admittedly very brief, experience with twitter, I found it nearly impossible to actually grasp whole conversations. Little snippets and snipes get RT'd to the sky while the main discussion thread gets forced ever downward in the interest sorted feed.

I see toxicity not as twitter’s problem, but as its feature. I go to twitter to find out people’s gut reactions to current events, and in that role it is a uniquely capable and succinct resource.

What you will not find there is rational and reasonable debate, but imho that’s not what twitter is for.

This also exists on FB. If anything, the only reason people are aware of it on twitter is because it's not as much of an enclave as it is on FB.

See, for instance, "cryptic pregnancy" communities on FB, which are definitely hotbeds of mental illness.