Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve

> - feel the need to defend their polarized but flawed viewpoint at any cost

> - are virtue signaling others but refuse to take any accountability whatsoever

> - have less and less attention span

> - only consume the content that aligns with their views

This is a bit of a weird diagnosis. The first four aren't problems with twitter, and the last one is simply false. The most politically polarized people are constantly hate-reading content from the other side.

The only sure issue that twitter has is its cozy relationship with the US government, and the personal issue that I have with it is the enormous amount of harassment it allows while at the same time heavily moderating content for its politics/worldview.

Every other issue I have with twitter is technical, like its horrible web design, its lack of interop, the disorganized nature of "verification."

> It's like there's fire in the house

It's not. It's like people are trying to convince us there's fire in the house, and that this fire entirely consists of people's speech about their honestly held and very common beliefs.

1. People are high-variance, and yet we're only allowed to follow individual accounts. That's a problem, especially because network effects mean that one person's voice gets amplified exponentially with the number of followers they have. Consider the six degrees of separation: applied to Twitter, we realize that it only takes 6 retweets to reach basically everyone. Following "Topics" is close but not good enough, because you cannot voluntarily opt into topics or really understand why a given tweet is within a topic; Twitter uses its Computer Magic to categorize tweets and makes all the decisions in a black box.

2. The only negative feedback is unfollowing. This is a problem because it means that practically all forms of engagement are treated equally. Oh, this tweet is getting a lot of comments, let's boost it so more people see it! Whoops, it was about space lasers. We are stuck repeatedly fighting Bad Takes because they have to be argued against every time, always gain nonzero traction. They are never put to rest. There is very little negative incentive against being a garbage human on Twitter, especially if you're anonymous.

We're never going to change core human behavior, but the design of a platform can guide that behavior. For example, the HN and Reddit model of posting means that your previous karma has no impact on your post's reach. That has serious implications for the kind of conversations that become popular on the platform. Another example: Facebook's commenting model is not nested and therefore doesn't allow you to have conversations with other people. So what do you get? Everyone screaming into the void, vaguely in the direction of other people.

Everyone talks about "changing the system", and yet all the suggestions are mostly cosmetic like charging for accounts. That doesn't change the fact that every time Elon tweets, it's automatically shunted to a million people no matter how bonkers it is.

How to pay $1 BILLION per year in financing.

It's not actually possible, no user is going to put up with the fees or advertising required for that level of revenue.