Putting the internet together again, for culture’s sake: one man’s hopeful journey from Twitter to Medium

“I think the internet is broken,” [Evan Williams, a founder of Twitter and Blogger] says. He has believed this for a few years, actually. But things are getting worse. “And it’s a lot more obvious to a lot of people that it’s broken.”…

“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Mr. Williams says. “I was wrong about that.”…

Writers want readers and, usually, money. Readers want to be entertained, instructed or outraged. Publishers need revenues and profits. Yet no one has come up with a satisfactory and sustainable way of harnessing the internet to satisfy all these parties without descending into sleaze and clickbait.

“Now that we’ve made sharing information virtually effortless, how do we increase depth of understanding, while also creating a level playing field that encourages ideas that come from anywhere?” Mr. Williams wrote in Medium’s 2012 manifesto.