This is why I long for a social media that doesn’t allow anonymous accounts (or has the ability for someone to choose not to interact with anonymous accounts).
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It’s a nice goal but there are plenty of people whose personal circumstances require online anonymity and they don’t misuse it. People who have to separate personal from professional settings or victims of abuse who need to remain safe.
In my view moderation is the answer not the removal of anonymity. Removing anonymity might just remove access for some people.
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I agree and understand that some people desire or even require anonymity and do not abuse it. Plenty exist on here.
However personally I find the abuse far outweighs the benefits for me so I would happily partake in a network only for verified profiles. Or a “happy medium” whereby you can be anonymous but I can allow myself to only see verified people.
The amount of vile abusive messages and even threats I’ve received from Twitter from anonymous accounts cemented my view sadly.
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I wish Twitter had an option like Instagram for “block this person and any new accounts they create”. It would add a little bit of friction to slow down the casual abusive idiots. They would find someone else to pester rather than spin up dozens of email accounts just to try and get back to us.
I personally need an element of anonymity due to my work.
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I think they have (or had) something but it was for notifications rather than interactions.
Like I said I totally understand why anonymous profiles exist. My job is the reason I have received so much abuse, so in many ways I wish I had just started our anonymous but I didn’t!
Anonymous works in smaller environments like this, but when it comes to mass social media like Twitter there are too many people spoiling it for those who remain anonymous yet civil.
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I agree on anonymity, because it helps some of the reporting on Twitter of live events like anti-government protests which is one of the few actual benefits of the platform.
Then again I feel like this is discussing whether the Titanic needs a new engine just after it hit the iceberg so…
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I personally prefer the idea of moderating the content, not the person.
I personally loved when Twitter was going around hiding his tweets, outright calling them out as lies, and fact checking them. I think that does a much better public service good, than just booting them off so they’re free to continue that behaviour elsewhere with no checks or balances.
When something breaks the rules, remove/censor the thing that breaks the rule, not the person who broke. By all means punish repeat offenders with a time out, or even take a trick from the gaming world with a shadow ban, but I don’t think it should ever really be a permanent action. People learn their lessons from effective content moderation, and I don’t believe anyone is incapable of that.
I know this approach comes with the caveat of requiring more time, money, and resources though. It’s a difficult challenge, but one worth attempting imo if the goal is to help and improve humanity which Elon claims he loves.
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I broadly agree with you, education and compassion can go a long long way. But there are some people at the edges who sadly won’t or can’t learn and if their posts pose real harm to others then I think you end up having to moderate the account rather then individual posts. It prevents future harm and helps to set boundaries for others.
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He’s still absolutely making shit up on the hoof:
How are you going to implement that, sir? To what standards? With what staff? And what happens when users mistake someone with the same name for the famous person? Do John Lewis and Liz Truss get banned now?
tl;dr, he fucked around, he’s finding out.
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Wonder if they’re going to enforce that on people who already have blue but haven’t agreed to those terms then…
Oh yes.
For example:
Kathy Griffin has been suspended also, though sadly no point linking as I can’t find any screenshots of her parody posts, only news of her ban.
There’s another one which was posted earlier in this topic, day or so ago.
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Just a case of flinging shit at the wall to see what sticks
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This one actually intrigues me. I’m not sure it’d work, the platform isn’t designed for it, but YouTube is in desperate need of the competition, it’s getting ridiculous. I don’t care if it’s twitter, or someone else, but someone needs to compete.
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Turning twitter into youtube might work, eventually (it’d require a complete redesign of the site)… but monetization when they’re losing money like it’s going out of fashion and half their advertisers have bailed… how?
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Turning Twitter into YouTube won’t work for the simple fact that one is video-based and the other is text based. No more than Monzo turning this community into YouTube would work. Square peg, round hole.
As for YouTube competitors, there’s Twitch, isn’t there?
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There was also Patreon or whatever (or was that just for donations?) and Nebula(?). Some creators did a push on those platforms for a while but it all seems to have fizzled out. At least for those I follow
Patreon is sort of donations with some personal extras, but Nebula was the “YouTube alternative”. It’s pretty decent for longer videos but the algorithm and suggestions are nowhere near as good as YouTube so I don’t really discover anything on it and barely use it now.
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Twitch is for streaming, not VOD. It only stores your videos for a certain amount of time (depending on how much you pay).
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Lots of people still use Patreon, I have several things I follow on Patreon, but it doesn’t host videos afaik. It’s more a place where you pay or donate a monthly amount to get access to extra content and support the creator but the stuff you get access to will be actually hosted somewhere else (google drive, private YouTube etc).
example, an TTRPG group I follow have a Patreon where they post bonus content, after-show chats etc which only subscribers get access to, but their main show is free on YouTube.