I find Twitter teaching me to stand my ground in terms of my boundaries and what I enjoy. If I talk to somebody and they start insulting me, I mute. I mute people who insult others too. Difference between physical public space is that if some people are screaming at each other, you'd have to engage somehow (like break them off) or disengage by walking away. In Twitter you can mute them. Let them fight between themselves.

I tried Twitter many times but always stopped using it after reading a lot of upsetting materials. Like you follow favorite musician and beside music announcements, there are political rants. I returned to Twitter when I learned to use Mute function liberally. Maybe in your case, you'd feel better on more art related sites like Tumblr or DeviantArt?

I don't want another huge social network. I'd have a number of smaller autonomous ones.

IMO being informed is about your own research. Either making sure you follow trustworthy people and/or checking their sources.

Wondering if the account is real or fake? Check the person's website, wikipedia page, look if there are more accounts with this name.

People are willfully disinformed. Do you trust information just because it's being liked many times? Well, being popular doesn't mean it's right or healthy.

In Russia many people don't think their government is doing anything wrong. Why? TV says so. Their coworkers do. But you have Youtube, Telegram. Most media who's websites are blocked have YT channels or their articles can be read on Telegram with quick view. No VPN needed.

In my POV many moderation/censorship arguments boil down to the desire to be walled off from bad info vs being able to make individual choices. Russian government is doing the former by blocking independent media.

Russia began alleged NATO fighting well after it annexed Crimea and invaded Donbas.

Retaliate against what? Helping Russia's neighbor not being destroyed?

I hope ads will die some day. To me they are just annoying and very rarely informative.

Where's the funding come from, then? That was not a cheap purchase.

I wasn't talking about Twitter specifically. Ads are a dominating revenue model: Youtube, Instagram, Facebook etc. I had an idea of people using crypto payments instead of likes. A platform would take a cut.

So PBS?

Or government funded/controlled socials.

Maybe something funded by public, yes.

I think there is a need for smaller existing community-based social networks. They can be paid for by certain people or crowdfunded once in a while like Wikipedia.

I'd expect like counts to fall precipitously if you had to pay for every single one.

OTOH a like would mean a lot more because it would mean someone literally put their money where their mouth is.

Yes. I feel that "liking" is a consumerist approach to conversation. Buy/no buy, swipe left/right. It's more nuanced in real world. We don't always agree or disagree with people, sometimes we just listen and exchange words. So yeah, there would be less "likes", but they would be more substantial.

Or maybe they wouldn't because it's just twitter and why would anyone pay to "like" something? seems more like the crypto fantasy for a world where everything is a financial transaction. I don't think its a realistic assessment of how people actually value money and speech.

sure

you can see with youtube premium that the value of individual ad views is basically nothing, and getting users to pay a reasonable monthly fee ends up being much more profitable. nobody will do the 'pay per video' thing because its not as profitable as just getting a monthly sub.

I wouldn't pay for each video I watch now, but I could probably watch less. It's like eating junk food now: you can eat nonstop but it doesn't nourish.

How about charging anyone with more than X followers? Or pay to be verified? or pay for support? Supported bot accounts or corporate accounts? There are many options they could pursue. Twitter was not helped having Jack as a part-time CEO for all of those years.

> How about charging anyone with more than X followers?

Excellent idea, let's deplatform people by creating lots of bot accounts to follow them so that they have to pay for it!

Verified accounts means it’s somebody well known outside of Twitter. So it’s beneficial to Twitter to have them.

I see today’s Twitter as a chat app where popular people promote their content to less popular. Maybe it would make sense to help populars sell stuff directly and get a cut.

That tweet doesn't seem to exist when I click the link. Unless I'm missing some context if you're saying Elon will run for president I don't think that can happen because he was born in South Africa.

Most people have concluded that the "natural born" clause doesn't mean "born in," otherwise Ted Cruz would never have bothered to run. Of course, it hasn't been tested by the Supreme Court yet.

His issue is that he wasn't born a US citizen, not that he was born in South Africa.

Deleted tweet.

Elon Musk is not eligible to be President.

Which is probably why they deleted the tweet. They were probably getting ratio'ed to hell. So they decided to delete their shame rather than take their lumps.

What does "getting ratio'ed to hell" mean?

Replies >>> likes + retweets

Implying that people are dunking on you for being wrong instead of amplifying what you said.

The tweet has been deleted - do you have the content?

Clearly they generate revenue, though.

What's your proposal for how Twitter makes money? Just double-down on the harvesting of personal information instead?

Personal info harvesting is at the core of most ad based businesses. Like Google of FB. I’d help people sell things. Like be a platform to sell books, nudes, news etc.

Serious question: what is the benefit for a journalist to work for a news org vs working solo?

Same as any other line of work: they only have to focus on writing, not on all the other aspects of running a sole proprietorship (health insurance, taxes, etc.)

There’s also a built-in, base audience.

In some cases, there’s prestige that comes with working for certain publications.

Stable pay. No one pays journalists or writers besides a select few.

I like the top bar and the neat bottom one. But I prefer having more space on the screen. I have an AutoHotkey script to show task bar only on key press so it's not toggle by accident. Then it's always fullscreen-like experience.

I believe that deep and interesting conversations need to have stakes. In your example with VCs, stakes would be trying to figure out where the market is going or trying to strike a deal. Latter also works for rich people.

In context of modern social media, the main stake is emotional involvement. Which is often a sign of a shallow understanding of a subject.

Take reddit conversations on controversial subjects. There would be loud statements with many upvotes and counterpoints with many downvotes. And downvotes discourage debating for regular people. So you are left with homogenous opinions and trolls.

I think interesting conversations may happen with individuals that you stumble upon by chance. Easiest way to get lucky is to be involved in some community that fits your interests.