[DanielBMarkham]

I've been considering this for a while as well.

I don't think there's anything wrong with social media. It's just pointless and irrelevant. The only thing that's wrong is that we rely on it to do something it could never do. As experience on HN showed me and others years ago, with a big enough crowd? You can't say anything. People misunderstand. People disagree with points you never made. A term you use in one way can be construed another way. You're foced either to write 10K word essays on supercillious topics like "I like ice cream" or accpeting the feedback as not worth responding to.

I think there are two things that are required for useful social forums: curated participation and a creed (not a set of standards). You need to have a group of 3-30ish people that you've curated that all subscribe to a small set of beliefs. (Beliefs might be something like "the primary reason for our existence on this planet is to care for and help others", or "Building a strong AI is more important than anything else we can do")

Both the number of members and the number of items in the creed have to be manageable. They both have to be visible at all times.

At that point -- I think -- you can start sharing content and opinions, speculating on interesting and complex social topics.

Just not with the world at large. Big groups don't work that way. Big groups where everybody tries to be kind to one another, and isn't that the point, norm downward to the weakest member. We can't both emotionally-reassure a mentally-challenged victim of gang rape while simultaneously discussing something like sexual harassment legislation. This is stuff we all know innately if we're in a room with a thousand people but somehow completely forget when we're typing stuff into a little box on a screen. Important conversations about tough topics don't happen like that. There's nothing wrong with Twitter, it's just not the tool for having any kind of interesting/difficult conversations.