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I am not too concerned about Twitter keeping content b/c in the wall/river model of showing posts the past is irrelevant, even to the point that if a user wants to save a post for future reference/accountability a screenshot is far more effective than say scrolling down forever and find it (if it wasn't deleted). In other words: Twitter is more like a news channel not a blog.

Wanna fix Twitter? Fix trolls. It is far too obvious for the real users to spot when trolls are pushing a trend or flamming. Why can't Twitter setup some AI to mitigate troll activity? Same thing with big bucks pushing dubious campaigns a la Trump.

Two features that will make it better user experience: bookmark a tweet and add subjects/tags to tweets or accounts so users can have multiple streams well classified by subjects. Having a shampoo of content in chrono order forces scroll down to the point where one left last time.

However, all these fixes would make Twitter less profitable. So, nevermind.




"Fix trolls" will turn into a euphemism for "censor contrary opinions".


While I'm sympathetic to the sentiment of not wanting to silence legitimate, civil discourse, I'd like to think there's some middle ground that's broadly acceptable.

We don't tolerate people running around cussing at others with impunity. (I'm not going to go into the "contrary opinions" aspect of it, because I think at least for a first approximation general uncivil speech works well enough.)

The penalties for doing this in real life are also offset by the cost of actually doing it: you have to physically be there, and others can retreat to private spaces. Online you can spin up fake accounts and bots with nearly all of the cost of dealing with it on the part of the recipient (by for example, blocking the user).

What do you think? This is something I've been thinking earnestly about and I'm interested in others opinions.




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