j.r. leonard

Hm; I think your proposition is likely correct (Twitter should have only verified users), but also Twitter wouldn't be here with those rules. Which can have its own takeaway

Not sure that I understand the “should” here. If you want to be part of a platform that only allows verified users that’s fine. But what makes it a moral imperative? In generally, I have a hard time squaring people’s states opinions about Twitter with their revealed preferences

The question you need to ask is what are you creating here. I am not sure anybody in social media space thinks this question through. Lack of a design parameter that fundamental means you’re allowing something to be created. This can be good or bad, in the general case.

In the specific case of Twitter, what has evolved through pretty obvious incentives is a system that has pretty bad defaults. The best parts of Twitter, on the other hand, are (IMO) observable. Those happen not to require anonymity to function.

This is kinda hard to suss out in this medium, itself.

Sorry, digress. Anyway, when used as a replacement for conferences, it works pretty well. If you follow a lot of scientists or craftspeople or artists who would normally congregate in communities of interest in meatspace, they can do this here easily with a low sig/noise ratio.

It’s great for a different perspective on emergencies (an area of study of mine) and for insight into communities of interest that aren’t just the crafty-arty-nerdy sort you might have little or no exposure to... marginalized communities or folks with disabilities etc.

But that’s increasingly drowned out by the bad-default-enabled part of Twitter, which is sadly (but predictably) dialed to 11 by those defaults.