Twitter and Mastodon: Prospect and Reflections

This is all very discouraging, but let me offer a few rays of hope. The objections I have raised are answerable. A centralized sign-up process, user-oriented focusing tools, social ownership, and an ethical governing organization could provide a better version of microblogging. We might even be able to preserve some of the best things about federated models. If one were to design focusing and filtering tools that worked for the users rather than the network owner, they would have both automatic and manual elements, and be subject to direct control by the user as well, which is something the commercial sites cannot allow, since users would block most advertising. But if this is going to come to pass, someone is going to have to take the lead and a great deal of resources would have to be put into this proposed system.

It surprises me how short this section, and the section on ideological problems, are. Partly this is because they are a short distillation of years of experience but, also, the problems of Twitter and Mastodon are simple; it is miserliness and ideology that are holding back solutions.

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