Actually I think Twitter has been at its best, at least since the start of the invasion. I’ve been able to access expertise, military and political; see eye-witness video from Russia and Ukraine; follow the news minute by minute. Bullshit has been called out. People have worked to geolocate war crimes. Russian trolls have completely failed to control the narrative. Ukraine’s indomitable tractor drivers have nicked tanks. And the best evidence for this is the Russians shutting it down.
Research and, IMHO, reason show that unless you have real domain expertise or direct experience of the event, you can't distinguish well-crafted bullshit from truth.
> I’ve been able to access expertise, military and political
Those are accessible outside Twitter. Better, the expertise is less diluted by noise, and you get expertise + focused work (papers and articles, with editors, etc.) not hot takes. Just read foreign policy publications like Foriegn Policy or Foreign Affairs.
> Russian trolls have completely failed to control the narrative. ... And the best evidence for this is the Russians shutting it down.
That may be true in this case (I am not so ready to conclude it), but we know well that it hasn't been true in many others and won't be true in yet more, and people can't distinguish. Also, that does't mean others don't control the narrative - people who using the crisis for their own ends or even people you coincidentally support.
It’s true that expertise is available outside Twitter, but Twitter has been great at letting me find it. The mechanism is retweets from people I trust. Note, trust also helps distinguish bullshit from truth. I don’t know what a Javelin is, or how the war in the south is progressing, but the right journalist can find the right expert who does.
I don’t say these problems have been solved perfectly, just that they’re better than I expected.
This is exactly my experience as well. Extremely high quality information with bullshit directly being called out (even in the case of pro Unrainian fake news like the „ghost of kiev“ thing). I was waiting for the russian propaganda bots all the time but they never showed up (except for one youtube video where the whole comment section was full of whataboutism).
Compared to what you get from curating a hand full of twitter accounts with a good track record / reputation traditional media and government outlets are pure noise in my experience.
