[nemothekid]

I don't understand what you would gain by replacing Twitter and Facebook. The incentives and structures that created them are here to stay. Anyone who thinks their open source pet projects wouldn't face the same problems Twitter has at the scale 300M active users is just being woefully ignorant of politics at play here and still thinks Twitter can be built in a weekend.

In 2016, you had a guy jokingly claim that he was ripping republican ballots in Ohio. This tweet spread like wildfire, and caused an unimaginable headache for the secretary of state as the right-wing media went wild on the story. I'm not surprised Twitter is taking such heavy handed action given that they will be directly in the cross hairs if a story like that ever happens again. No "replacement" would be immune from this issue.

[berryworm]

I don't think misinformation is caused by social media as such, and it is not the problem I would care about solving. I care about freedom of speech and owning my own content. People should be free to build their own bubble and make up their own minds about information they find online.

I also don't think anybody would choose to be censored, that doesn't make sense. Maybe you could offer optional spam or misinformation filters, but why would anybody force them one themselves? Twitter and Facebook also employ "fact checking services", which would simply be applied voluntarily to other networks.

I also think the problem is way overblown. On Twitter you can choose who to follow. If select the right people, you won't get the misinformation spam.

I never claimed a replacement could be built in a weekend, and the incentives are exactly part of the problem and part of my question. It seems technically possible to built something like Twitter on a distributed basis with nobody having centralized control, but it probably wouldn't be as snappy as Twitter. People stay on Twitter out of convenience, and also because of the network effect. You would have to make lots of people switch at the same time. That is the challenge.

[nemothekid]

The problem that Facebook and Twitter have to deal with now and the one you are claiming is overblown is misinformation. If the misinformation problem causes very adverse effects there are of course people who will come to see your platform as a bad thing and will either pressure or legislate you to change.

My previous example about the republican ballot shredding was one where a kid thought we would post a tweet that he was shredding ballots because he thought it would be funny. This not only caused an entire news cycle about how republicans that the entire process was unfair, but seriously called into the question the staff and security of those working on the elections. Many of them faced threats for an issue they didn’t know existed because of this tweet. Similarly if you have people showing up to pizza shops inciting violence because they believed Hillary Clinton was hiding children in the basement your platform will ultimately be seen as a conduit for this type behavior. It’s no different from yelling fire in a movie theater.

It doesn’t matter if you individually carefully select and get who you follow, you have to ensure everyone else acts accordingly - and as we can see they won’t.

You have to ask yourself if your platform was large enough to have these issues in the real world what would you do to minimize it - because if you don’t Congress will and the hammer of the state is very blunt.

[berryworm]

I disagree completely. And as I said, I wouldn't be interested in solving that problem. That governments are interested in censoring publishing platforms is an independent problem in itself.

[nemothekid]

What do you disagree with. My point is any platform, once large enough will have to deal with it. You can't just ignore the consequences that come from ignoring it. I don't think it's an independent problem in itself - the examples I gave you are direct problems that institutions face as a result of large scale misinformation.

Just saying "I wouldn't solve that problem" doesn't contribute in understanding how one can build more open platforms in the future.

[berryworm]

Why would a platform have to deal with it? The only issue is escaping government regulation (censorship). And that is a different problem. I'd rather fight for freedom of speech than trying to censor my users.

Also there would be no reason to switch away from Twitter if you want to censor users anyway.

And I disagree that the spread of misinformation is such a huge issue as you make it out to be. Misinformation existed before the internet, it isn't caused by it. The internet makes it easier to double check information.

If watching a boy burn ballots makes people burn ballots, I don't think Twitter is the problem here. I think those people have some other deep seated problems. I'm sure I wouldn't burn ballots if I saw that video (I haven't).