Mobile-addicted. Web-dependent. Digital plumber. Nerd. He/him. No-coiner.
Both Cohost and Post News treat "replies" differently than posts. They're not just posts in reply to other posts, they're literally only visible in the context of the original posts.
It took me way too long to realize that that is a good design decision, not a bad one.
It depends entirely on the capabilities and effects one wants a system to have and propagate.
Absolutely. Twitter's desired effect is propagation to cause engagement from other people, but the more I think about the effects of that, the more I think not doing that is the approach that makes the most sense to me.
I would argue Twitter making replies first-class citizens structurally equivalent to posts—combined with its tightly-constrained character count per post—is what makes it uniquely interesting, uniquely democratic and uniquely powerful.
“Safe spaces” without that capability can still be useful for people who want them (and one can imagine platforms with Twitter-like functionality that are made safer in other ways) but they are in no way or form a replacement for that incredibly useful, valuable power.
