It was only a “town square” in the minds of Twitter users, no one else thinks that about a news media propped-up social network. If anything it was a comment section attached to nothing. And comment sections all get bad after a while.

There are a lot of public institutions using twitter for their communications.

There are a lot of public institutions not using Twitter for their communications too. Are those institutions not in the “town square”?

And they should be utterly ashamed of it. They give it a legitimacy that it has not deserved for years now.

Completely agree, feel the same about facebook et al too.