I wouldn't say it's superior in general. Threads are different from highlights. There is a reason why they evolved, and I'd say it's not purely because of limitation.

I like to think of them as paragraphs. And when sharing media, it's almost like a slideshow. Threads are useful imho and different from blog posts.

It goes without saying that I'm a fan of highlighter (understatement of the century). In case one of the onlookers doesn't know, I wrote this blog post a while ago:

https://dergigi.com/2023/04/04/purple-text-orange-highlights/