1. You cannot argue faithfully with 140 characters. 2. Isn't a "like"/upvote tool necessary for debates? There isn't a formal judge to rate comments/arguments.

1. You cannot argue faithfully with 140 characters. 2. Isn't a "like"/upvote tool necessary for debates? There isn't a formal judge to rate comments/arguments. Who "wins" is decided by the (very) biased community. This is obviously a bad idea as most communities aren't open to unpopular ideas. However, if you trust the community as a whole you can expect general consensus about sensitive topics such as gay rights, immigration etc. If you would throw out any evaluation tool then extremist options have the same visibility as any other comment. Meaningful rejection would then be only possibly by 'spamming' a similar counter argument. I think it's pretty much impossible to create a meaningful rating system because of the said biased 'judges' - removing the like functionality doesn't seem like an improvement though.