Its discourse devolves into vitriolic dunking because Twitter incentivizes dehumanizing fellow users and maximizing engagement by being as inflammatory as possible to rise in relevance in the Twitter-ordered feed. Unlike Facebook, which entails a certain amount of accountability, or Instagram, which prioritizes the engagement of likes over comments, Twitter acts as the online equivalent of the 405 at 5 p.m.You can just flip people off and merge without signaling from the solitude of your own car, cackling away as some sucker you just cut off fumes behind you.
To maintain that legal protection, they can't just start policing speech at will, and nor should any American want the tech giant to enter the censorship business.
Twitter shouldn't ban anonymous accounts outright, as plenty are innocuous and just good fun, but the more people put a name and a face to their accounts, the less hostile the site will be.
Obviously Twitter is unique in the rapid pace at which tweets circulate, and unlimited editing privileges could result in a tweet being edited to something bigoted or malicious after it's already garnered thousands of retweets.
Irking its entire user base by removing positive signs of engagement to prevent it from contrasting with negative signs will only result in more ire.
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