Tony is describing a deeper dynamic (in part and in the first paragraph at least). While he's too humble to consider himself such, for stars and rising stars, Twitter-like experiences will always be more engaging and rewarding. Afaict forums are a relatively level playing field meant for "the rest of us" who aren't content watching the stars from the bleachers.

Perhaps conversations have become shallow as a result of there being more of them, which has so many inputs, but I haven't noticed much of an absolute downward change in high quality takes (I'd guess the opposite). Indeed, perhaps personalized ranking will allow us each to subjectively see our preferred signal band as noise increases.

Still it won't change that this format favors weak identities just as well as the strong and that's not going to be valuable for everyone and that's okay.

+1 on the excellent and thoughtful feedback