Great to see the dueling opinions on controversy over Twitter

I found Thursday’s Letters to the Editor fascinating. The two letters regarding Twitter’s future were at completely opposite ends of the ladder of opinion. To compare and contrast was easy for those of us reading, thanks for printing them on the same page.

Mr. Shpudejko of Goodyear believes Twitter, under Elon Musk, will be a “true public forum for various views.” Mr. Dana of Peoria believes the youth of today (his own generation) are poisoning their attention spans by paying so much attention to the “false facts and disinformation” of today’s media, including Twitter.

Their differences lie in how the audience and users of Twitter are seen by each of them.

We can agree that a free exchange of ideas is critical to our republic form of government, but we must always be careful to separate out opinions from facts, and truth from fiction.

I believe that is what concerns many people regarding Mr. Musk’s definition of what is factual and what is false in the free speech arena. Inaccurate or false statements can have very harmful results. We’ve seen that with the varying theories about COVID treatments causing deaths and long-term illness.

I was particularly struck by Mr. Dana’s comment that his fellow students have very short attention spans due to getting their information from apps rather than reading journalist’s reports in newspapers. Mr. Dana made no accusations about political positions and his point about the importance of newspapers and journalists to our democracy was reasoned and calmly stated. Hurrah for our thinking young people!

Marion Durham, Tempe