To be honest I don't think the problem is twitter. Twitter was founded and run by free-speech crusaders. It provides a platform for people to say what they wish

To be honest I don't think the problem is twitter. Twitter was founded and run by free-speech crusaders. It provides a platform for people to say what they wish, period. It's the expectations we've projected on twitter. A forum for anonymous messaging run by people who believe in free speech is NOT an appropriate place for an online presence as a celebrity or business. You really shouldn't tie it to your real name. It's perfectly fine for there to exist 4chan/twitter-esque cesspools of hate and wretched abuse at every turn. It's not perfectly fine for people to, as part of their job, log into thousands of racist hate-spewing garbage messages targeted at them every day, or have their online identity plastered with it. This is the kind of place that twitter is. Some are sheltered from the storm and don't notice it. Partly because you aren't the target audience for random acts of hate (maybe you're a white male in tech), and mostly because you just haven't gotten unlucky enough to attract the attention of certain hordes of hate spewing monsters. But if you use twitter to network, you're diving into the cesspool. If you invite others to network with you on twitter, you're inviting them to do the same. If you post a twitter account as part of your online presence, you're broadcasting to the world "yup, I'm part of this". And that's a real problem for twitter. You can't have both unrestrained free speech and civilized communication.