Isn't twitter just some sort of tiny echo chamber? Don't we regularly see these studies claimg that only 2%of the users generate 99% of the content? Twitter is only harmful to businesses who hire marketing firms who think twitter is representative of the general population.

My anecdotal impression is that YouTube and Twitter played a big role in spreading election misinformation. The main basis of the Kraken conspiracy theory came from a YouTube video which was spread on Twitter and I remember numerous election integrity fake news tweets getting hundreds of thousands of retweets from a large right-wing echo chamber. It may have been worse on FB but I do think the asymmetry of attention and scrutiny is far out of whack.

I'm going to guess the reason is that congresspeople and journalists see Twitter as their domain of control now and benefit from the privileges of a blue check mark and the other side being kicked off. Probably Zuckerberg's lack of charisma and physical appearance isn't helping either, however unfair that may be. Another reason might be that the FB newsfeed lacks transparency unlike Twitter which contributes to distrust.

> I don't get why Twitter always gets a free pass on the harms from misinformation.

Twitter is where all main stream journalists are. They are not going to bite the hand that "feed" them. Facebook on the other hand has still some amount of non political correctness on their platform so that's something main stream media who wants to control speech online cannot stand.

> I think it's because Twitter is seen as doing more (banning Trump, putting notifications on posts), but is that actually the case relative to what FB is doing?

Twitter certainly has a tighter moderation when it comes to "moderating" alleged conservative speech, yes, which is what matters to the former camp.