Rob Fahrni

Follow @fahrni on Micro.blog.

Twitter and Free Speech

What’s wrong with these people? One a billionaire, one a US Senator. They both seem to praise the open market but in these tweets they seem to think that open and free market is punishing them because “the left” is somehow controlling them? Wacko.

Here’s a reminder Mr. Musk and Mr. Cotton of what the First Amendment means.

Look, businesses don’t care for assholes. If they detect the slightest stench of controversy they’re going to do what’s best for their company, not to mention their shareholders. It’s smart. Sorry, bros, they don’t like Twitter at the moment. I agree with them.

If Musk’s new Twitter climbs to new heights and he’s able to keep it from being a hellscape filled with trolls, monsters, and Nazis I’m sure advertisers will happily give their money to him. As it is nobody knows what the hell Musk and his sycophant advisers come up with to make the platform a success.

AHHHHHH!I mean, come on, an $8 blue check mark? Bad idea. Will Twitter even bother to verify the person paying their fee to make sure they’re the real person? Probably not. Those check marks are there for a reason. It’s so you know the person with it is the real person. It all started as a safety measure.

At one point I’m fairly sure Musk said all people should be verified. That is a great idea. All humans should be verified, if of course, it’s the real them. After that verify corporations and the like. Make special allowances for posting bots that represent companies or real verified humans. E.G. something that auto posts news updates to an account and label them as bots with a special symbol and test indicating they’re bots and who runs them.

Everything else is garbage and should be wiped from the platform.

Yeah, that’s going to be really expensive to pull off. Make the sign up process easy but don’t activate the account until an actual human being or company is verified. Then turn it on.

If you want to allow porn, allow it. Just put it behind a paywall and verify any customer of the service is of legal age to view the content. If I’m not paying for it, I don’t see it. What a concept!

How about adding long form writing, like a blog post? Sure, you could charge for that too!

And for heavens sake put some adults on your new content review board thingie. Don’t fill it with out of touch Elon bros.