Suggested by Chris Bura almost 4 years ago

For better or worse, we're now online communicators. But for thousands of years, we as a beast have communicated in person, read body language, had context or background on those we've agreed and disagreed with. If someone floated the idea of committing violence, he wouldn't find a community of encouragers, instead it would be swiftly nipped in the bud.

I'm not saying social media is inherently bad - we can all think of numerous amazing things social media has brought about. Nonetheless there is a great unmet need.

If we look at the incumbent social media players that focus on thought, dialogue and debate, it's really Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. (There're others like Quora and the partisan sites of Truth Social & Parler, and to a lesser extent Substack) But let's focus on Twitter. As Musk states -"Twitter is the de facto town square". Even though just 10% of Twitter users account for 92% of its activity, Twitter effects all our daily lives more than any other platform. The prevailing winds of Twitter drive corporate initiatives and government policies. It's the megaphone of politicians, activists, media outlets, and influencers, which effects everything from local school board and District Attorney elections to congressional seats and presidential races. Twitter can inform us like no other, and ignite rhetorical wildfires leading to boycotts, harassment, death threads and career endings.

Twitter didn't ask to be the town square or set the mood for the country, which is good, because it's poorly engineered to do so:

1. Its character limit, although great for engagement, is awful for conveying nuance
2. Its very convention of "following" exacerbates echo-chambers, polarization, drives people towards the extremes.
3. Its engagement algorithms, tightly associated to followers and their content style, enhance the above.
4. Its incentives of likes, retweets, and follows promote the worst type of interactions - from hyperbole, sensationalism, and strong rhetoric, to snark, nastiness and trolling.
5. Truth or being truthful are casualties as there's no way to vet the veracity of claims - and as Mark Twain puts it - "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
6. The paradigm of online discourse itself doesn't inherently promote civility. On the contrary.
7. The vertical nature of a "feed" for both posts & comments doesn't lend itself to more robust communication tasks such as solution discovery, compromise finding, or truth vetting.
8. It's lack of Bot & Troll prevention leads to gaming of the system and overall nastiness at best, and full-on state-sponsored disunity campaigns at worst.
9. Lastly, because it's seen as such a soul-sucking place by many, people with great ideas and potential contributions have no desire to participate.

Some great reads:

• Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid - Jonathan Haidt - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
• Yes, Social Media Really Is Undermining Democracy - Jonathan Haidt - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/social-media-harm-facebook-meta-response/670975/
• This July Fourth, Meet Three Americas, The red, the blue, and the tired - David French - https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/this-july-fourth-meet-three-americas
• The Story of Us - Tim Urban (Wait but Why Blog) - https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html

Here's where I apologize for coming off overly dramatic... :)

We as a nation (and many other democracies) have never been more polarized, more nudged to the extremes, and more pessimistic about our country's future. Based on my own experience, interviews with others, and many smart thinkers - our current options for online discourse are only exacerbating the problem.

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” - Abraham Lincoln