@futurebird The idea that you should have to talk to someone rather than about their post of public importance is so batshit and contrary to the way the real world works.

Imagine if students were assigned to @ authors over and over rather than writing about their books. 🤦

@futurebird I think their hidden assumption is that there should not be things of public importance here.

That everything here should be "politics free" interpersonal spaces for hobbies and feel-good stuff and everyone should ignore that the person they're engaging with about their hobbies is a nazi as long as they don't bring it up. 😠

@dalias @futurebird there is a goofy conflation of small and large posts and accounts. It can be annoying for a small time poster to end up in the public eye. But if you have news agencies, politicians, and billionaires on your network, spewing their stuff, we absolutely should be able to treat their statements as objects to be examined, rather than responding asking with 5000 other people, 99% of whom will be ignored.

And honestly I wouldn't want big accounts to be able to turn off #QT

@stevenbodzin

This line of thinking is fascinating to me in a good way.

In any social network large accounts have real power. I don't care if we have #qt or not, when there is an account with a million followers they can create abuse in ways that others can't.

I always thought that big accounts should have been held to a higher standard-- though twitter always did the opposite.

A big account attacking a small one is objectively different from me calling IDK the mayor of NYC an idiot.

@futurebird yes that's just it... Maybe this whole discussion is going in circles because we're discussing the wrong thing. The issue isn't #qt, but how to deal with scale.

In US libel law, we get to dunk on "public figures" more freely. There is a whole jurisprudence around ideas like "limited public figure."

Similarly, just as you suggest, communities can and should place stricter rules on the behavior of bigger voices.