I consider "everyone can read everything" one of the most important parts of Twitter.

I wouldn't use Twitter if it was limited to people I already know, for instance.

But every other platform has that as well.

It is just that twitter only has that option.

Facebook has become much less interesting once it started constantly reminding people about privacy options and almost everyone went from default-public to default-friends, or often even more restrictive settings.

They only did that due to user demand though. People didn't want their private life wide open for the world to see.

My problem wasn't default public but rather that I am fairly certain they retroactively made pricate stuff public.

Yes, but most other platforms don't have the same level of vibrant public discussions.

On things like Facebook, discussions are mostly between friends or "friends of friends", with no chance of an outside opinion, for instance.

Well going further than that, on Facebook, for a lot of people the majority of their 'friends' are school friends (for younger people often their entire school year, even the years above/below), and extended family, people that they feel obligated to add (due to Facebook's pressure to have a high friend count).

These are ultimately people they wouldn't choose to follow the conversations of at all, given the choice.

For me Twitter was like starting with a clean slate. I just follow the people I want to follow, basically no 'friends', just interesting people.

I have no idea why anyone even likes Twitter. Beyond broadcasting, there is nothing of value on it. Every tweet has absolutely inane replies. You can at least find some half-decent commentary in Facebook post comments, but Twitter is just insane babble

See, that's the funny thing. For me Facebook is full of inane babble and people being superficially nice to each other and incredibly ... provincial? It's like a bad sitcom.

Twitter on the other hand is full of interesting conversation, people speaking their mind, and great interaction and interesting insight. The amount of tech things I've learned from cool people on twitter is far far greater than Facebook.

Experience of both mediums prob depends on who you're interacting with. For me, Twitter is where the interesting people are.

Or as someone put it once: Facebook is for people you used to know, Twitter is for people you want to know.

How a social platform looks like to any given person depends on the people that person associates with. If twitter is inane babble to you that says more about what you did with twitter than about twitter itself.

In my field (marketing), it's overrun by spam.

And anytime I've looked at anything remotely political, I had to take a bath afterwards

Marketing and politics are probably the two worst areas to try to find any humanity in.

I use it for things like gaming, talking to locals (almost everyone I know in my current city I met through Twitter, or through someone I met through Twitter), getting local news, and keeping up with friends.

I haven't done anything with twitter. Technically I do have an account, but most times I visit the site, I'm not logged in. I can't find a way to get a toehold toward anything but inane babble.

Two reasons:

1. It's where the people are. I don't think anyone is 100% loyal to it, but you have to respect its reach.

2. Instant answers. I can get insight on news via Twitter well before I can get it anywhere else. On top of that, I can get it from the people I want, many of whom are Tweeting hours before they are able to get an article published. This is great for sports, politics, etc.

I personally don't use Twitter nearly as often as I once did, and I rarely find reason to Tweet, but I do enjoy browsing it from time to time.

Where else in can you follow DeepMind and FAIR researchers discussing the latest OpenAI research paper?

It seems to me that discussion is pretty much the opposite of inane.

For instance, infosec and developer community is mostly on twitter. Great for trolling and has clean interface unlike notorious Facebook clumsy UX.

Everyone has their own preferences. For exmaple, I have no idea why anyone even likes Facebook ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Twitter is the only Social Network I use.

Don't think of it in terms of technology, think of it in terms of people. We live in the future where not only can you watch your role models on TV, but you can also follow them on Twitter and read their daily thoughts and opinions in real time.

On Twitter you can banter around with famous people you'll never meet in real life and who won't friend you on Facebook.