Exorcising Twitter
With proper tools, users can do far better than regulators
Open Letter to Elon Musk:
Congratulations on taking ownership of Twitter which, you have promised, “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences.” Toward that end, here’s a modest proposal for simultaneously promoting the free exchange of ideas, tamping down the flow of online disinformation and hatred, and reducing the likelihood of heavy-handed and counterproductive regulation. Perhaps something like my idea is already floating out there. Maybe you’ve already floated something like it. If so, go for it.
Currently, Twitter has a caste system of blue-checks versus everyone else. For a user sufficiently prominent or well-connected, a blue check reduces the chance of social media identity theft. That icon certifies the user’s identity and effectively de-certifies others trying to co-opt the name. However, this mechanism also helps protect the rest of us from the more toxic inclinations of the rich and famous. Blue-checks, fulminant with prejudices and delusions, must restrain their baser instincts on Twitter for reasons of self-preservation. If they allow their inner demons to hold full court in the public eye, they can suffer profound financial repercussions and other losses of prestige. Ye for that.
But how about a check system for the rest of us? Create two new categories—say, gold-checks and gray-checks. Gold-check accounts would bear the owner’s name, and perhaps additional personal information (e.g., locality). Enough to identify the individual reasonably well, but not enough to dox him. Gray-checks would be free to use pseudonymous handles; a reader would have no idea whether the gray-check’s tweet comes from a U. S. Senator, an unemployed barista, or a robot in Санкт-Петербург.
Gold-checks could post commentary without much fear of censorship. If they wish to post disinformation, hate speech, or vitriol, they will do so knowing that their names will be tied to whatever sputum they hock in the public’s face. There is great value in allowing vipers to self-identify in plain view. Doing so allows us to know who they are and what they are thinking. Better to hear the rattlesnake’s rattle than to fear the snake in silence. Of course, you might intervene in extreme cases (e.g., direct physical threats or doxxing)—or perhaps you would outsource that function to law enforcement.
Gray-checks could tweet as they wish, but they would be subject to Twitter’s powers of moderation and censorship. This threat is no greater than the rest of us face today when we tweet anything other than pet videos. Twitter’s human and robotic resources would have more time to spend on gray-check accounts, since there will be little need to monitor the content of the gold-checks.
Gold-checks would be able to limit access to their tweets. For example, they might prohibit gray-checks from replying to or quote-tweeting their posts. Tweeters, or even people without Twitter accounts, could, with one touch, eradicate all gray-checks from their feeds—eliminating the need to wade through the sewers just to get the morning news (or to pet videos). Gold-checks ought to be able to toggle this masking function—viewing the gray-checks whenever they wish and, thus, staring into the open maw of the beast on demand. (Viewing the gray-checks would not automatically allow them to reply or quote-tweet.)
Gold-checks who bar gray-checks from their feeds should be able to make exceptions for specific gray-checks—and to do so effortlessly. There are legitimate reasons for some tweeters to use pseudonymous handles. Some cannot openly participate because of employment situations, personal relationships, or safety concerns. Some of the most valuable tweeters I follow use noms de plume. They are cautious, polite, and thought-provoking. I want them in my feed, even if I haven’t the faintest idea who they are. (One Twitter-friend of mine engaged for years in online camaraderie with a pseudonymous Californian; she learned later that her nameless e-friend was Marlon Brando, who was simply enjoying the luxury of conversation without adulation and sycophancy.) [NOTE: Her conversations with Brando occurred in pre-Twitter AOL chat rooms.]
With the sort of system I propose, a gray-check must earn his way into polite society by maintaining acceptable levels of civility and reliability. Perhaps there could be an Uber/Airbnb-style rating system to help one decide which gray-checks to engage with (e.g., “Allow me to see the tweets of any gray-checks who receive five stars.”). The problem there is that malevolent forces would likely find ways to slather bad ratings on good people and good ratings on bad people.
Because of that susceptibility to manipulation, it would probably be better to give users the tools with which build their own individualized filters—thus making it more difficult for the bots to navigate. Perhaps individuals with good reputations could implicitly serve individually as certification agencies, for example, through a button that allows me to say, “I wish to see gold-checks and the tweets of any gray-checks followed by either the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Katy Perry, or the Babylon Bee.” I assume the Holocaust Museum, Katy Perry’s managers, and the Bee’s editors are careful about whom their accounts follow. I’m happy to piggy-back on their curators’ meticulous work, rather than on the choices of Twitter employees or politicized bureaucrats. And, of course, if Katy Perry’s account follows a gray-check whom I loathe, I still want the ability to block that gray-check individually. The idea is to allow fine-tuned, individualized filters to develop organically, from the bottom up, rather than by fiat, from the top down. I probably wouldn’t object to Twitter itself offering a menu of disrespected users—a sort of “here be dragons” list for others to use or ignore.
Gray-checks ought to be able to convert their accounts to gold-check—to come out into the sunshine on that glorious occasion when the desire for openness overtakes them. It’s probably unwise to allow gold-checks to switch to gray-check status under normal circumstances. That might enable gray-checks to engage in guerilla operations—entering the gold-check world just long enough to do mayhem and then slipping back into the shadows. I’m happy to bias the system toward transparency.
The idea here is to signal that pseudonymity is OK, but it is costly. You can hide your identity, but if you do, Twitter has the right to audit and manipulate your flow of thoughts—as they do for everyone today. Even more importantly, civilized Twitter-users will have far greater capacity than they currently have to shut you out of their lives with more refined instrumentality.
Yes, this proposal would likely require Twitter to expend real resources on the verification process. As a longtime tweeter, I would be glad to pay $10 or $20 or maybe $100 or more for the privilege of bearing a gold-check on my account. The bot farms in St. Petersburg are not likely to have the wherewithal to do so for each of the hundreds of thousands of mindless dezinformatsiya accounts. I paid real money to get a REAL ID driver’s license and a Known Traveler Number so that the TSA would lighten up on me at airports. I would happily pay Twitter for a gold-check seal of approval. (I’m aware that this raises fairness issues. Perhaps the costs could be borne, instead, by charitable institutions interested in enhancing the quality of public discourse.)
Last week, I attended a strikingly fine event hosted in Washington, DC, by the Truth in Media Cooperative (TIM). I spent a full day with brilliant, decent, well-informed, achievers from across the political spectrum — veterans of the government, private firms, press, military, the arts, and more. Time and time again, however, conversation turned to ways that attendees thought centralized regulatory oversight might mitigate the problems of disinformation and hatred on social media. As I said in those discussions, I have zero confidence that any regulatory regime we discussed would be either effective or remotely unbiased. Social media algorithms are too complex and too easy to edit; regulators simply don’t have sufficient resources or attention span to restrain and monitor platforms’ interventions into speech. Regulators also have intrinsic political biases. As I noted in one conversation, academicians sent in under some proposals to audit algorithms would be worlds away from a 50/50 Democratic/Republican split. The problem of regulatory capture would be absolutely endemic to the process, as modestly paid academicians would be auditing high-paying organizations whom they regard as potential future employers.
All that said, if the present-day environment remains unchecked, I suspect those shortcomings will not matter; destructive forms of regulation will rain down upon the social media platforms and their users. It is up to the platforms to stave off demands for such interference in the free flow of information. Something like a gold-check/gray-check system could help greatly. Give markets and the tens of millions of users the power to construct filters against disinformation and hate—rather than delegating that task to a small cadre of public- and private-sector regulators.
Happy tweeting.
Robert F. Graboyes
RFG Counterpoint, LLC
Very interesting! Not a Twitter user. After reading this don't think I have missed much. But, if these ideas come to fruition might reconsider .
I suspect that system would work well. Wouldn’t shock me to see a variation adopted. People could get the experience they want.