Twitter 2.0 - Where to Start
The five foundational features of a truly helpful social media platform
Since Elon Musk’s acquisition, Twitter has felt a lot like a Grade 8 classroom the first day a substitute teacher takes over. There are those kids who see this moment as the time to test boundaries and the teacher is overcompensating. Personally, I’m in a wait-and-see pattern regarding the platform for reasons I’ll talk about at the end of this article, but it is understandable from a fight-or-flight perspective that many are looking for alternatives.
As a technonaut, technology transitions like these inspire curiosity. I like to ask, “If I had access to the brightest minds and programming talent, what would I create for my friends?”
In terms of a social media platform, there are a lot of things that would fit around the edges that would be very specific to comics (e.g. how to handle PDFs), but I’ll leave those for another time. If I was the builder in charge, I believe these five features would need to be at the foundation of any electronic public square. These would not create a perfect system, but a better system. For the sake of argument, let’s call it Twitter 2.0.
Digital ID verification
If I’m visiting a protest in a public square, I want to see how many people are actually there. The guy holding up 12 signs still only gets one vote just the same as everyone else. I want to see that my friend is actually my friend and that the expert speaking really is the expert I came to see.
In cyberspace, this is surprisingly difficult to achieve, especially when there are legitimate reasons why someone would want to remain pseudonymous. The technologies that come closest to addressing this are KYC or know-your-client procedures used mostly in financial circles. Obviously, you don’t want someone setting up a credit card or bank account in another person’s name, so most finance apps have a way of onboarding users in a way that addresses this sort of identity theft.
To date, Twitter has played fast and loose with this concept, with the only requirement being a unique e-mail address to sign up. Infinite free e-mail accounts make it easy to create infinite free Twitter accounts. I should know. I have at least five accounts - essentially channels - where I discuss different issues. My middle-grade students didn’t need to hear my wisdom about romantic gestures, so when I was exploring that subject, I used a pseudonym. I believe this is a legitimate work-around to a missing Twitter feature.
But when Musk took aim at mock accounts, he wasn’t just being a self-serving petulant baby. He had been talking about the issue long before he even announced the desire to take over the company. This is a real issue that plagues many, many Twitter users, especially those whose reputations can be mined for “trust as currency” and used by “catfishers” and other scammers.
As an example, Rachel Siegel, aka CryptoFinally, is an influencer who recently posted this tweet . Opening those four images, you’d see well over 50 unique spoof accounts. Clearly, this is not OK.
But what to do about this? I believe the ultimate solution is to eventually force everyone on the platform to be identity verified. But in today’s climate of suspicion around privacy concerns, a full KYC workup that includes photos of your government ID (e.g. your passport or driver’s license) probably would not fly. This is especially true if Twitter itself was collecting the data.
The best available alternative? You guessed it. Payment verification by a credit card company. My prediction… the $8 Twitter checkmark fee is just the start with the low-hanging fruit of current paying customers. I expect all Twitter users will eventually have to be verified and having a third party identify who-is-who is a far better strategy than having Twitter 2.0 do that itself. Not only does credit card verification make it impossible for someone to say Twitter 2.0 is excluding them, it also helps localize id verification to regional privacy and data collection legislation.
Another not-so-subtle benefit of this 3rd Party KYC procedure is that real names need not be stored by Twitter itself. The organization needs to know an individual is unique, but it would be relatively straightforward to ensure that pseudonymous names were checked for impersonation before being added to the platform. I’d give them an easily identifiable alternate checkmark. In a similar way, company accounts and similar, administered by third-party humans, would also have to be identified differently.
Of course, the obvious flaw in this is that not everyone uses a credit card. In the US, about 70% of individuals own a credit card and that number is significantly higher here in Canada . But for a public square to be truly open to all, the requirement to have a credit card cannot keep people out. It is a reasonable starting point, but can’t be the final solution.
And this is where things get super complicated. Digital ID verification is literally the life’s work of some computer scientists and is the sole purpose of several industry standards organizations and companies . Finding a solution that works for everyone from a billionaire from a well-known family to a Syrian refugee without papers is both important and extremely difficult. I’ve only had three speeding tickets and one parking ticket my entire life, but I still had to come into my local police detachment to have my fingerprints taken for a criminal records check because some dastardly pedophile has my exact birthdate here in Canada. Refusing a criminal record check/id check would have meant giving up my teaching certificate. This is one of those places where society’s rule breakers have necessitated the formation of an entire industry.
So, given that a perfect solution simply isn’t possible yet, I propose that those who don’t have a credit card be sponsored. This could be by government agencies, corporate entities (e.g. you get a Twitter 2.0 key with the registration of a product so you can access tech support), or better yet, by individuals who can vouch personally for their ID. If Bob is verified through traditional KYC methods, they have the ability to verify the id of other people they know. If Bob eventually proves to be a nefarious actor and is banned from the platform for bot behaviour, every person they have sponsored (and so on up the ID tree) also would be banned.
Difficulty aside, digital ID verification, preferably by several, regional third-party entities, is key to building a trustworthy digital town square.
No advertising. Wait. What?
My Twitter 2.0 would have zero advertising. Or more specifically, anything that incentivizes “enragement engagement” or simply trolling for likes. Most advertiser-sponsored platforms use algorithms to monitor and enhance engagement, eg. the amount of time on the platform and with specific content. If something grabs your attention, it will give you more of that. Why? To show advertisers that the platform is being used.
This is a problem because it doesn’t pass the screaming child test. In a classroom setting, if a student has a meltdown, you don’t encourage more students to come watch. In fact, you find ways to do the exact opposite. It is human nature to focus on a perceived threat, but sometimes the right thing is to look away. Unfortunately, algorithms that encourage engagement basically do the exact opposite, encouraging troll behaviour, click-bait headlines, and at its worst monetized hate and incentivized disinformation. Frankly, any algorithm that is designed to differentiate the value of any Tweet to another human from a corporate standpoint is problematic.
In 2021, 92% of Twitter’s revenue came from advertising, so this is not a trivial transition. Fortunately, the goal of my Twitter 2.0 is not to sell advertising, but rather to turn a profit. There are several ways to make that happen.
To the prior point, if even 70% of Twitter’s existing base paid for their monthly subscription (either directly or via sponsorship), the company would bring in over a billion dollars per month (206M x 70% x $8). This would significantly exceed Twitter’s existing advertising revenue. There are other possible revenue sources. I would look to Discord as a model.
Eliminating the need for algorithms would make the need for programmers to create, manage, and refine algorithms (read customer manipulation tools) redundant. Those humans could be assigned other projects (see below).
Anything that reduces the reach of individuals simply trying to “ratio” an original message for sport can only benefit Twitter 2.0 users, comic creators included.
The ability to listen to everyone I follow
My new social media platform would allow people who follow me to actually hear me. Or more precisely, choose if they want to hear me, and how often. You would think this would be a given for social media platforms, but on algorithm-controlled social media feeds, your followers rarely see everything you post.
For example, your reach on Facebook is said to average about 6%. This filtering does not meet the purpose of a town square. If your friends have circled around you in a huddle, they should all have permission to hear your voice. This is one of the reasons I started this substack as it makes it much more likely that you will hear about my upcoming Kickstarters or new content. A typical open rate for e-mail is generally about 30%.
Pragmatically, this probably means that there should be levels of followers. No one can handle a firehose of content all the time. Twitter 2.0 might have a circle for close friends, a wider circle for acquaintances, and maybe beyond the ability to create a digest of some of the best things from other people you follow. But those settings should be in the hands of the user, not in the hands of Twitter 2.0.
Let my comic fans decide if and when they want to listen to me.
Moderated speech
The true measure of tolerance is not in how we handle speech we like but in how we deal with speech we don’t like; rules tend to be written around this concept. There are no countries that don’t allow exceptions to free speech rules. Whatever these boundaries are, users should be incentivized to take down illegal speech. Not eventually, but as soon as it occurs. This sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it need not be.
In the starting condition on Twitter 2.0, every user’s tweets are assumed to be legal, and every user is assumed to be a good judge of what is legal speech. We have two users, Peyton and Justice, who occasionally interact.
One day, Peyton tweets something questionable and Justice is outraged. Justice flags the message using a menu of illegal speech in that jurisdiction. Their “message flag pull-down menu” might look like this in the US:
Obscenity
Fighting words
Defamation (including libel and slander)
Child pornography
Perjury
Blackmail
Incitement to imminent lawless action
True threats
Solicitations to commit crimes
Believing the tweet violates “Fighting Words,” Justice flags Peyton’s message, and it instantly comes down. But at that moment, Peyton’s message gets sent immediately to a legal specialist in “Fighting Words” and one of two things happens.
Peyton’s message is judged to be illegal. They are notified of this, their message stays offline and they are given a “strike” or immediately banned from the platform. There would need to be a way to appeal this, or
Justice is notified that the message did not truly violate any laws, the message is reinstated, and Justice loses that option from their pull-down menu for a prescribed period of time. They have demonstrated they are not a good judge of this exception to freedom of speech. Repeated abuse of the system would be a reason for being banned from Twitter 2.0 for a time.
Initially, this would be mayhem. But over a fairly short period of time, you’d end up with a knowledgeable shield of platform moderators, be rid of a ton of trolls, and Twitter 2.0 would not have to actually be involved in much moderation.
Message filtering
There is a lot of legal speech that is really, really annoying. Twitter 2.0 would enable individual users to filter the “drunk uncles” in your feed, either permanently or for a short period. Sometimes our ability to handle aggravating tweets has more to do with our own mental state than our actual respect for the person speaking. I’d add two filters for this.
The first filter would be for tone. If you think about a dinner party of strangers, we don’t typically end up in small groups based on identical #hashtags. Quite the opposite. Some of my favourite connections happen with people with very different world views. It is how you grow. But what we do tend to do is filter by how a person makes us feel. If we are in a feisty mood, we might tolerate an argumentative person. But if we’ve had a rough day, a nice comfortable conversation might be in order.
I believe something like Grammarly’s tone indicator could help. There are times of day when I just want to read joyful news. If each time you posted, you received a summary of your tone, and these tone indicators became reader filterable tags, I think the platform would ultimately become more civil.
The other feature I want to help filter my feed is a “probation bin.” If a message from someone I follow is annoying, I’d like to be able to swipe left and flag that message as something I’d rather not hear about. Then, from time to time, I’d like to be able to look in this probation bin and see who has been repeatedly annoying. At that point, I could decide to clear their slate or unfollow them. (As a bonus to companies, collated and anonymized data on messages that ended up in probation could be something monetized).
Conclusion
In summary, my goal with Twitter 2.0 would be to foster true relationships where people grow in knowledge all in an environment that is not plagued by bad actors I am forced to listen to. This is not currently Twitter and it was not before Elon Musk acquired the company.
But I’ve made many long-term friends through Twitter and made some amazing connections there, so for the time being, I am taking a wait-and-see approach to Twitter. Right now, it is like that dysfunctional Grade 8 classroom. But in the same way that I’ve seen substitute teachers absolutely rock a class given time, there is a non-zero chance that Musk will actually succeed in eventually making the platform better. And there is a 100% chance of things getting worse if all the good people abandon the town square and leave it to the bullies. I suspect you need to be old to truly understand the reality of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But this doesn’t mean that I won’t be investigating other ways of communicating with my friends and fans. Discord, in particular, has become my happy place these days. I’ve long held that 12 years olds predict the future of tech, and if that is true, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat probably shouldn’t be ignored. Beyond that, it is a truism that your newsletter will do more for your comic efforts than any social media platform will ever do, so here I am.
Thank you so much for being a part of the early days of my substack.
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