Has Twitter ever considered de-escalating its improvements?

tl;dr - perhaps Twitter could attract more users by going back to how it was 'in the old days'. In Twitter's early days not enough people knew about or understood what it could do (not just 'what I had for breakfast'). Presumably some of the slightly annoying tweaks that Twitter's been rolling out over the past few months are intended to make it 'easier to use'. But now that everyone knows what Twitter is my argument here is that all this fiddling about is unnecessary. What are they up to eh?

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What I think a 10,000 character tweet might look like (using the example of Twitlonger which has been letting people tweet more than 140 characters for years now):

Apparently Twitter is considering changing (!) from a 140 character limit per tweet to something more like 10,000. I'm going to have to assume that you won't see all of those 10,000 characters as you scroll through, that really would be pretty dire. I'm assuming tweets will look a bit more like those you get with Twitlonger where you get the first 120 characters or so and then a link to the off-Twitter post which you can read in full. Or perhaps they'll do it with a pop-up / floating overlaid window, or even just a 'click to expand' (which we already do with tweets anyway).

It's all fine with me, I am pretty chatty on Twitter and a longer format serves me very well, so speaks the voice of one who has #TouchTypistPrivilege ;)

Twitter's forever tinkering with things and I'm never quite sure why. I suppose there's the pressure to innovate as opposed to stagnating but not many of their recent changes have really improved the service. I understand Twitter's very keen to garner new users and perhaps making it all look more like MySpace makes it attractive to larger amounts of whatever the target audience is.

If you've tried creating an account recently it's very different from how it used to be - you are basically actively encouraged to follow a whole load of (mostly US) celebrities before getting started. We didn't get that in the old days.

I wondered if, now that everyone who could ever want to know, knows what Twitter is and does if all this electronic hair-pulling and fiddling about is necessary. Instead of progressing ever onward have they ever considered scaling it back to how it was previously, getting rid of those awful blue lines that stick a bunch of threaded tweets together (completely unnecessary when you can click on any tweet to unfurl its threaded conversation).

De-improving your Twitter
Moments - use AdBlocker and another extension to remove Moments from desktop Twitter, instructions for various browsers here http://www.madbitcoins.com/2015/12/how-to-restore-twitters-notifications.html

Pic previews
Today @LouWoodley asked "Seriously noticing all the images/videos in my Twitter feed today. Is there a way to minimise them so I can just see text? #oldschool" and I don't know if it's possible on desktop Twitter, but @jonhew suggested that on Tweetdeck it's Previews > Off to adjust column settings. For phone Twitter it's the little cog symbol for Settings > General, according to @kenparry.

This post is a little over 3,000 characters by the way.

Further reading
Twitter shares hit new low on rumored shift to 10,000-character tweets
Tech company considers expanding beyond 140-character limit as it looks to grow user base under recently appointed chief Jack Dorsey (5 January 2016) The Guardian

Mute, block, private - the three Twitter levels of peace and quiet, but not much else

The three Twitter levels of shushing people are

1. Mute

Muting someone just stops their tweets from appearing in your timeline. You'll still receive any tweet they send you as an @mention or a direct message. Muting is useful for temporarily shushing people who are live-tweeting an event that you're not interested in while keeping all other lines of communication open. They won't know they're muted unless you tell them.

Can you see their tweets? Only the ones where they've tagged your name
Can they see your tweets? Yes (unless they've muted you)

2. Block 
Blocking someone means you don't see their tweets. None of their tweets will be shown to you including their broadcast tweets and any tweet that mentions you. They also can't follow you or interact with your tweets. It is possible that you'll still see something of them if someone else that you follow retweets one of their tweets. All of your tweets are still entirely visible to them however, blocking just means they can't communicate with you on Twitter.

Can you see their tweets? Yes but on official Twitter you may need to click a 'view tweets' button (see first picture below)
Can they see your tweets? Yes, but it may take more effort depending on what platform they use (in second picture I've taken the screenshot from Twitter desktop which doesn't show profile, but Echofon on iPhone does).

What it looks like when you block someone, on Twitter

What it looks like when someone blocks you
(on Twitter, tweets visible on other apps!)

They may know they're blocked if they look at your profile on official Twitter sites (desktop or Twitter for smartphone / tablets) but might not notice if they're using third party apps.

Blocking someone does not stop them from seeing your tweets however and even if they're shown a blank profile your tweets will still show up in searches. You can see screenshots of what a blocked account can still see (I tested it with a spare account) here.

If you have blocked someone know that they can see your tweets by searching for from:yourname.

Think of the Twitter block more as a "continue to site" hurdle rather than "you shall not pass" barrier. Most apps still show a blocker's tweets to a blockee (even when logged in) and blockees can always search for a blocker's tweets (even if they're logged in), or just log out.

Rather unfortunately an awful lot of people have taken the "you are blocked from following X and viewing X's tweets" to mean that "if you block someone on Twitter they can't see your tweets", which isn't true. 

2a. The missing impossible level
This is the one that everyone seems to want - the ability to really block one or more people from ever seeing your tweets while making all your tweets publicly available to everyone else - but of course it's impossible. Anyone, if blocked, can use another app, use another browser or log out, or search for the tweets of someone who's blocked them.

It is impossible to stop someone from seeing your tweets unless you make your tweets private and trust everyone that you've allowed to follow you.

3. Private
This hides your tweets from everyone except those accounts that you've allowed to follow you. Your tweets will not show up in search results and tweets you send to people who aren't following you won't be seen by them.

Can you see their tweets? Yes
Can they see your tweets? No (unless you give them permission to follow you). Remember that your followers can share your tweets by manually retweeting them (comment RT) or by taking a screenshot (or, worst case scenario, having their account phished or hacked).

If you want to see how much people can infer from your conversations, even though they can't see your tweets, run a search for to:yourname or just yourname. In fact I'd recommend this to anyone with a private account.