Going live soon! nitter.siddz.com/i/spaces/1eaJbgdZNLkxX

I'll be going live on Spaces with @YoelTIsrael in a few hours, discussing media myth vs reality on @X over the last year. We've decided to go ahead despite the situation in Israel, as we can cover how the media is distorting this war aswell. See you guys there! nitter.siddz.com/i/spaces/1eaJbgd…

PSA: I'll be co-hosting a Space this weekend with @YoelTIsrael, discussing media myths about @X and the truth about the X team's great work over the past year. See you guys there! nitter.siddz.com/i/spaces/1eaJbgdZNLkxX

Just a heads up - I’ll be a guest on NFT God’s Space later today, sharing the latest details on what we know about the Shadowbanning and Suspensions situation. See you guys there!

Thoughts on improving the Block/Mute function Obviously there’s been a lot of discourse the last few days about the Block feature - most in favour of keeping it, but some outspoken voices against. I’m for keeping it, but there’s some improvements that I think could help address the concerns of those against it. Why Blocking should stay What makes X different from other social platforms is how open it is. Reddit is divided into smaller communities; FB and IG generally divides into friendship groups. Meanwhile on X, your content is right there in the open for anyone to see and interact with. It’s maybe not a coincidence that the “ratio” is uniquely associated with this platform. When I talk to people, one of the reasons people give for not being on X is in general how toxic this platform can be. The Block button is one of the things that makes this platform atleast somewhat tolerable, especially for women and minorities like LGBT+ people. Without it, even more people will leave and the platform will gain even more of a reputation as an unpleasant platform with lax standards against harassment and trolls. I don’t think this is the way to make X a much bigger platform in future - infact I think X needs much better protections against this and more control for users on their own experience. Otherwise, lower harassment will become a significant selling point of other social platforms. Criticisms of Blocking The primary criticisms of Blocking that I see are: 1) Blocking is against free speech - it can be used to stop people you disagree with from being able to reply to you. 2) A blocked user cannot see your profile even if it’s public, and cannot report or Community Note your posts. 3) Blocking someone can be seen as a “badge of honour” - that you allowed a user to “get” to you to such an extent you had to shut them out. 4) Blocking is ineffective since users can just create another account. 5) X should have a better moderation system so that blocking won’t be necessary anymore. According to one report from an anonymous X staffer, Elon’s main criticism seems to fall under 4): “Musk’s main objection is that blocking a particular user from following you and seeing your tweets isn’t very effective, since the person can simply create an anonymous account to view your tweets.” To evaluate each in turn: Criticism 1) is probably the most legitimate criticism of Blocking, IMO. Certainly across my many years on X, I’ve seen many cases of blocking being used for less than legitimate reasons. While this can be annoying and in some cases devalue conversations on this platform, I think seeing it as really a free speech issue is poor analysis. Out in the real world, freedom of speech doesn’t guarantee you access to all areas of society in order to spread your message. If you have extreme-left, extreme-right, or otherwise fringe opinions - while in a place like the US you can’t be arrested for it, you generally will not be given access to mainstream media, publishing, workplaces and education, etc. etc. Another point I will make about the “echo chamber” argument is there’s hundreds of millions of users on X. Even if someone uses Block lists (I think this is harder to do since the API access was cut off), it’s hard to genuinely deny access to opposing views on your posts, unless you set replies to Following-only. Criticism 2) is also fairly legitimate, and something I will address a possible fix for below. 3) is fairly subjective. Ofcourse, muting still exists as an option if you want to deny someone that “badge”. But in the end I don’t think most people care that much if a harasser or troll thinks they’ve “won”. People just want those users out of the way. 4) As mentioned, this seems to be the main sticking point for Elon. This is true of the most committed harassers. But the average use case of Blocking probably is not quite on that level. Many accounts I’ve heard from are of the opinion that most trolls will move on when Blocked - "out of sight, out of mind". Also, if someone sets up an alt account, they’ll start from 0 followers. Their replies will generally not be shown high-up on the target user’s reply section, and they won’t have much ability to reply and quote-post to direct their followers to harass the user. There’s more improvements to be made here that I’ll cover below. 5) In an ideal world this would be true, but we’re not anyway close to that yet. I’ve heard from several different users that the ratio of reports of clear-cut harassment and threats that get actioned at all is about 1 in 10. I’ve seen cases of what is undoubtedly threats of violence that get judged by the moderation system as not violating X’s rules. At the very least there would need to be a massive improvement in the results of moderation before this point can be considered, IMO. Improving the Mute feature As Elon said, it should be made more effective. Sometimes the mute “fails” and you can still see quotes, reposts etc. from the user. It could also be a good addition to introduce Mute timers. You might not want to mute someone forever, but maybe a few days or weeks, then give them another chance. Improving the Block feature I don’t think the Block feature should be removed, but there’s a number of ways it could be made better. Allow blocked users to visit profiles. This is the one relaxation of the Blocking feature I will support. While it might feel psychologically less safe for some users, it’s not really that much of a barrier, since it’s always been possible to just open another tab and see it that way. My proposal is that if someone Blocks you, it functions as if you had muted that account. In other words, you’re removed from following them, and their content will never be shown on the feed or in searches. However, you can still see their profile if you go to it directly. This would allow Blocked users to still write Community Notes, or to file reports on a user’s posts. It seems this would go some way towards addressing the issue of accounts using Blocking to shut out criticism. Prevent abuses in the system. One that gets brought up is someone replying to you with something derogatory, then immediately blocking you so you can’t see it. I’d propose there should be a “cooldown” on blocking someone. Say, you can’t block someone for 24 hours after you last interacted with them. Also, implement a timer like Facebook has that if you unblock someone, there’s a timer until you can block them again. Better enforcement against impersonation. One of the issues with Blocking is impersonators will block you before you can find out about them. Maybe there’s a good reason this hasn’t been implemented yet, but it feels like there could be better measures in place against an account using the exact same username, PFP, and description as another, larger account. Improve measures against creating alt-accounts to get around the block. Right now it is indeed very easy to create an alt and continue harassment that way. I would propose X implement the feature on IG where it also blocks all the users’ alt accounts aswell. I don’t know if IP-address blocking would be viable, but if so it could be considered. Restricted mode. One idea that could be considered, like IG and YT has, is that Blocking someone still allows them to reply, but their replies would only be visible to them. This isn't perfect since especially larger accounts would likely notice that they don't get any interaction, but it could maybe help deter smaller trolls from setting up new accounts.

Fixing the verification problem I don't usually tweet stuff on the main page... but as the verification debate on raged yesterday I was throwing around some ideas with one of the subscriber communities I'm part of and ended up writing a long post with all my ideas. Might as well put it out here! 1) Reinstate the legacy checkmarks. It'd be a backpedal for sure but one part of a way past this impasse. It’s clear enough a large proportion of legacy accounts are not willing to subscribe, and verification of identity does provide reputational and financial benefit to Twitter (both for brand safety and user trust that famous figures are who they say they are) 2) Legacy accounts should not be identifiable by any marker vs Blue accounts, and should not have access to any Blue benefits such as monetisation. 3) Roll out Identity verification as soon as reasonably possible, and publicise this through Elon’s account and the official @Twitter accounts. Add an incentive to do so - for instance, only ID-verified accounts get the full blue checkmark, non-ID accounts get a partial outline checkmark. 4) Do more to publicise the Blue verification process - many, many people still believe there are no checks against impersonation. The range of Blue benefits besides verification could also be more widely understood. 5) Continue to roll out creator monetisation, particularly ad revenue sharing. This goes a way towards addressing the criticism that Twitter should pay content creators instead of the other way round. 6) Twitter should do more to try to convince businesses and organisations to make full use of the affiliates feature. It’s a great feature but currently underutilised. It is easier to convince, say, a newspaper to verify all 100 of their journalists than to convince all 100 individually. Like David Sacks said, this should be conceptualised as a business expense rather than a personal expense. There could be the option to not have the affiliate badge visible if brands are worried about being associated with personal accounts. 7) I think an attempt should be made to see if verification and subscription can be separated. I’ve seen some reasonable criticisms from people that having these two forcibly combined is conceptually muddled. I’m not sure of the exact solution here. Perhaps you could have a one-time verification fee, as long as someone provides ID, a credit card and phone number. There are various identity verification services Twitter could partner with that presumably have ways of checking against fake IDs. Perhaps biometrics for phone users. Again, not sure of the exact solution but it should be thoroughly investigated as far as possible. 8) Look into the viability of Blue gift subscriptions, as long as the receiving account provides some form of verification. 9) Look into if there could be some form of “reputation” system for non-Blue accounts who are nonetheless real people rather than bots. There’s always going to be a high proportion of Twitter users who choose not to subscribe - whether due to disagreeing with the company management, believing that social media should be free, unaffordability (especially in developing countries), or being under 18 and not having your own credit card. 10) In general try to aim to “stabilise” Twitter more as a platform. Ofcourse, trolling legacy media, establishment politicians and left-leaning politicians can be genuinely entertaining - but now that Twitter is at break even financially and apparently heading for a fairly solid profitability in the next quarters of the year, there’s less reason for short term juicing up of user numbers. The focus should shift more towards increasing Twitter user numbers via enticing content creators and the rapid release of new features and improvements to the user experience, especially compared to the flawed experience of other social platforms.