Twitter at 20: How we lost the public square

Twenty years ago, Jack Dorsey changed the world. He opened his phone and sent a message to a new platform he had created: “just setting up my twttr”. That post carries the ID 20. (A post he shared last week has the ID 2032161152470565367—a small detail that captures how dramatically the platform has scaled in the intervening decades.)

just setting up my twttr

— jack (@jack) March 21, 2006

Following that first message, Dorsey’s short-form social network quickly cemented its role in our digital lives.