Just days before the event, Twitter’s Trending Topics sidebar—intended to surface the most interesting conversations on the platform—had become flooded with conspiracy theories about the death of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. A month earlier, the president of the United States had used the platform to share the idea that four members of Congress, all women of color, should “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came.” For too long, the platform has been a breeding ground for the kind of anti-immigration rhetoric that likely contributes to hate crimes and to the American epidemic of mass shootings. If Twitter is a party, then it’s a party where the punch is spiked with PCP and the carbon monoxide alarm won’t stop blaring, because all the guests are slowly succumbing to toxic fumes.

—Arielle Pardes, in “At Twitter, It Seems No One Can Hear the Screams”