What I’d do with Twitter

Not that anyone asked but with the recent news around Twitter’s leadership and as an avid user of Twitter, I sat down and thought what would make the product better.

The assumption with these is that the goal is to facilitate conversation - long Twitter’s goal. The current issue I see is that with a platform of 150+ million users, meaningful conversation can be washed away quickly. That, coupled with abuse and a rash of misinformation has lead to a diminishing product.

It’s a platform with an immense amount of power and influence that has clearly not hit its potential.

My ideas:

Private Timelines

Take a page out of Reddit and allow the use of private timelines. Admins, group permissions, ability to moderate - the whole bit. There’s been a long practice of different “twitters” and this would facilitate conversation in a bigger way. They could be private/invite only or public/anyone can join.

Imagine a campaign running a Twitter for it’s most avid followers or advocacy groups coordinating news to their local chapters. TV shows or sports teams could organize around live events. Local news could interact directly with the community they cover.

Default 24hr reply time

By default, tweets should shut off replies and quote-tweets after 24 hours. Look under any large account and the number of meaningful replies is almost nothing. Allow accounts to set their own time (12 hrs, 2 days, infinite) but make the default be much lower. Twitter’s strength is in its timelines and that should be a focus.

Aggressive Reduction in Abuse

People often reply to small product changes with “what about the Nazis?” and it’s time that Twitter finally address its most hateful users. Other actions I have mentioned would curtail abuse by removing the public nature of some conversations but more must be done for those publishing to the whole platform. Sure, it’ll take a lot of human power and AI and possibly sweep up some politicians but ignoring the abuse only multiplies it. Again, Reddit has made meaningful strides in this area.

Titles for verification

Twitter marks candidates for public office under each of their tweets but I believe they should do that for every blue check mark. The symbol is a shortcut that denotes authority but often these accounts display little information about why Twitter found them important enough to verify their identity. They can be sources of misinformation (sometimes unwillingly) and Twitter should institute titles for every verified account for why they were deemed worthy - author, journalist, doctor, politician, influencer etc. The more specific the better.

Verification is a shorthand from Twitter that gives accounts authority and one that should not be taken lightly.

Eliminate anonymous accounts

Following along with naming verified accounts, Twitter should require identify verification for every account. Admittedly, I am not entirely for this idea both as a fan of many nameless accounts, how it could affect advocates in countries where they are under threat and against the ever present creeping of employers into private lives. But requiring some sort attachment of a real identity to an account would curtail abuse and limit the ability for foreign governments/actors to impersonate citizens of other countries.

There is some balance there that can be found there. There are obvious gaps to be figured out - their current advertiser base is almost entirely brands running “anonymous” accounts. But some more accountability is required.

Get rid of the trends page

While one of the most famous parts of Twitter, it’s usefulness has been degrading for some time. Most often it seems that topics trend from people just tweeting “why is this trending?” This happened earlier this year with an anti Elizabeth Warren hashtag.

Again, by topics landing on the trending topics page Twitter is granting them a level of authority. Too often, this authority is misguided. Twitter’s data team does a good job surfacing topics during moments of big news and should focus efforts there. The algorithm seems broken to do it automatically.

One last note. I reference Reddit a few times here and that’s from my belief they’re innovating the most when it comes to moderating content. When I’ve worked on platform policy and moderation, I always sent around this great New Yorker article on their moderation from Andrew Marantz - Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet