
Twitter is at its best when verified accounts can’t tweet - MindGods
https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-unverified-takeover/
======
vannevar
It wasn't better because verified accounts were locked out; it was better
because accounts with large amounts of social capital were locked out. It
temporarily reset a social network to a more egalitarian state, before the
winner-take-all feedback loops take hold. But left to its own devices, even if
those accounts (and their owners) were locked out entirely, the same dynamics
would re-assert themselves and new dominating accounts would emerge, absent
some ongoing active effort to break the feedback loops that create them.

~~~
devmunchies
this is why i think visible voting (likes, hearts, etc) ruined the internet.
It creates teams, draws lines in the sand. Then teams with the most votes
thinks that means it's in the right.

Otherwise, you have to actually read each comment and think about whether you
agree with it instead of lazily appealing to votes.

~~~
NickGott
Well, there's always 4chan, which is exactly what you just said. Not exactly a
poster-boy for quality internet discussion.

Also, I recommend [https://bengrosser.com/projects/twitter-
demetricator/](https://bengrosser.com/projects/twitter-demetricator/) to
remove metrics from twitter.

~~~
devmunchies
it is precisely because 4chan one of the last popular "free" sites that it is
more extreme. if the entire internet were more like it, there would be more
mild sites with more PC discussion that you could join.

A site could still allow accounts and banning and have guidelines around
discussion topics, it doesn't have to be completely anonymous like 4chan.

~~~
errantspark
FWIW 4chan has accounts, banning and guidelines. It's not totally lawless and
anonymous. It just has the _option_ of anonymity.

Probably the best, deepest LGBT+ issues discussions I've ever had have been on
their /lgbt/ board. They were filled with people yelling obscenities too, but
that doesn't bother me. I guess it's the culture I grew up with, it's natural
to engage in discussion while people are yelling around me.

I'm really glad there's still a place out there that believes in free speech
as a foundational principle not to be infringed upon except as an absolute
last resort. I'm glad not everywhere is 4chan, but 4chan is a gem of discourse
in today's world if you ignore like 90% of it. I'm increasingly convinced that
that 90% is the inevitable cost of the wonderful 10% that represents the
sharing of intelligent thought without fear of reprisal.

~~~
latexr
> FWIW 4chan has accounts

The Wikipedia page[1] claims that “Registration is not possible”. Is it wrong,
or am I misunderstanding?

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan)

~~~
krapp
Using a tripcode would be the closest thing 4chan has to an "account" that I'm
aware of, but it doesn't require registration, it just adds a (theoretically)
unique identifier to posts.

~~~
errantspark
Yeah sorry, I was thinking of tripcodes and 4chan pass as representing most of
what an "account" is. It's not the same thing though.

------
wonder_er
This is fascinating.

I just threw together some absolutely atrocious javascript to make this
"verified accounts can't tweet" a feature.

Fire up the console, and run:

```

javascript

var verified = document.querySelectorAll('[aria-label="Verified account"]');

for (var i = 0; i < verified.length; i++) {

verified[i].parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.

parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.innerHTML
= ""

}

```

At least for me, this deletes the DOM nodes for all tweets from verified users
in my timeline.

I don't want to permanently unfollow all verified users, but having an option
to hide all activity associated with those accounts in my timeline? That'd be
nice.

If anyone who actually knows what they're doing wants to suggest a smarter
solution, or make a chrome plugin that does just this, I'd be forever
grateful!

~~~
insin
I've just added this as a "Verified accounts" feature you can toggle on in the
options of my Tweak New Twitter extension (v1.23 - Chrome Web Store always
takes a while to update):

[https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new-
twitter](https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new-twitter)

If you just want to check how much of your timeline is driven by verified
accounts, you can also have them highlighted instead of hidden:

[https://imgur.com/gallery/lcqq5bq](https://imgur.com/gallery/lcqq5bq)

~~~
nabaraz
I use this extension everyday. One request is to make center content take full
width (since I hide the sidebar and other widgets).

Thanks for the extension!

~~~
insin
I created an issue for this with a snippet you can use in your browser console
to try it out - what do you think of the resulting size of media tweets?

[https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-
twitter/issues/25](https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter/issues/25)

------
sambroner
My twitter feed was pretty slow without the Blue Checks. The dialogue was _way
more in the middle_. There was suddenly little conversation about today's meme
(cake? idk.) The whole thing felt pretty civilized.

It made me realize how much _content_ these twitter blue checks are creating.
It's _crazy_.

~~~
Funes-
It's almost as if the media was taking advantage of our psychological
shortcomings and invading our personal lives for profit, at the expense of our
well-being, eh?

The Internet used to be a refuge from the corporate public sphere; now it's
its home.

~~~
mnky9800n
I was reading a book this morning about mushroom foraging and suddenly
realized that I hadn't seen an advert in quite some time because it was a book
and not my phone. Then I thought about getting rid of my phone and only
reading books from now on. Now I'm posting this on my phone. It's quite
annoying how terrible the internet is now. I used to feel comfortable having a
conversation in a forum without thinking it was all generated from some
AstroTurfing nonsense or would be used to send me highly personalized ads.

~~~
indigochill
Some eReaders (avoiding naming names to avoid advertising at you :P) also
enable easy book-like reading (i.e. e-ink, no backlight/glare) without ads. I
like them because I can have a whole library in the size of one book. And also
I admit to a certain degree of anxiety about bending book binding,
particularly in paperbacks.

~~~
CrazyStat
I bought an e-reader when I went off to do an internship one summer and
wouldn't have access to the university library.

Internship ended up being a dud (they paid me for 40 hours a week but only had
work for me to do about 5-10 hours a week). I read over 50 books that summer,
mostly classics that I got free from Project Gutenberg. Definitely got my
money's worth.

------
mullr
My recipe for using twitter in psychologically sustainable way:

1) Follow only people you have met in person, or otherwise directly
corresponded with. I make very few exceptions to this.

2) Disable all retweets. Twitter doesn't make this easy, but there are tools
that do it in bulk.

3) Make sure you're looking at 'latest tweets' mode, so that you only see the
content you chose with (1) and (2). Twitter very frustratingly will put you
back in 'top tweets' mode periodically, so you'll have to keep an eye on this.
It feels like this happens about every 2 weeks but I haven't measured.

With this setup, nearly all of the viral BS drops away. I only see tweets in
which a person I have some relationship with has taken the time to actually
type something. 'quote tweets' are still problematic, but it's not nearly as
bad.

~~~
dogfoods
I have a shorter algorithm.

1) Don't.

~~~
boring_twenties
O(1), I like it.

------
soneca
Well there isn’t any argument for _why_ Twitter was at _”its best”_ during
that hour. It is just a blogspot surfing the wave of the meme that Twitter
without verified accounts is better. It is a joke that reflects an
insatisfaction with social media (and maybe the world), only that.

By this time, the trick is getting old: get a topic that is trending on
Twitter, write a few paragraphs giving some context using some humorous
language and then print a selection of the funniest/cleverest tweets on topic.
That’s it.

Why HN crowd give it the front page? I believe because HN crowd shares this
zeitgeist that distrusts so called “experts”. It is a vote that we dislike a
culture that is steered by influencers and people trying to earn more audience
(the currency of this time).

I agree with the sentiment, but the article is pretty empty about it, just a
meme retweet basically.

~~~
pfraze
Completely agree. The term "experts" in that context frustrates me -- and I
think you're highlighting this with "so called" \-- because I want experts who
actually fulfill that role responsibly. The only expertise which Twitter
surfaces is "Twitter Expertise" and the other talents are incidental.

We don't want to be steered around by this, so how do we create mass-media
that gives us the right properties, and what are those right properties in the
first place?

~~~
efreak
The 'mass' in mass media is not one of the properties. The only mass media you
need is a couple newspapers.

------
jeffreyrogers
Not sure where I heard it, but someone said: twitter is a mirror pretending to
be a window. It's easy to get this experience every day by just not following
verified accounts.

~~~
jbaudanza
I would agree, except that Twitter pushes so much content from people you
don't follow while attempting to keep you engaged. I'm talking about the
likes, retweets, comments, etc. If twitter did only display content from
people you followed, it would actually be quite pleasant to read.

I created a Chrome extension to do this, but the recent redesign broke it and
I haven't figured out how to get it to work again. The new css/class system is
rather opaque.

~~~
insin
I wrote an extension which does that; it keeps you on the Latest Tweets
timeline and moves retweets to their own fake timeline, so by default you only
see original tweets and quote tweets from people you follow:

[https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new-
twitter](https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter#tweak-new-twitter)

I've been using Twitter this way for years and consequently find the
unmodified version completely unusable, so it was either learn how to do it on
New Twitter or quit using it at all.

~~~
delecti
That seems redundant. You can already turn off seeing retweets from accounts
you follow, and the "latest tweets" timeline is already pretty sticky. I've
never had it revert to the default "home" timeline across any computer or
phone app install.

~~~
mjcl
My experience has been about once a month the iOS app (phone & tablet) will
revert from Latest to Top. It will show an easy-to-miss toast message saying
"You're now seeing top tweets first."

~~~
FreezerburnV
Once a month sounds nice. Mine likes to revert within a week :) (for the times
I actually use twitter more than a couple times a month)

------
ashtonkem
I noticed that without the verified accounts, there weren’t a lot of focal
points for rage and partisanship to collect. I suspect that’s part of why
twitter felt so different during the blue-out.

------
benlumen
"Professionally outraged" is the best term I've heard for most of the blue
check accounts.

Twitter doesn't need to be (and at one time was not) as toxic as it is. People
just learnt to be that way to get traffic to their book or whatever.

------
danschumann
Experiment: A social network that kicks people off after X,000 followers

In a way, you could "cancel" someone by following them, but if enough people
don't also follow them. Then you just see their tweets.

This is actually kind of an interesting idea. What kind of social dynamics
would play? On one hand, you want to see someones tweets, but if you follow
them, you may cancel them.

~~~
conscion
I think the "canceling" is too extreme, but the idea of limiting the number of
people can follow / be followed by seems interesting, especially in the
context of Dunbar's number [0] where a person could only really maintain ~150
connections.

Users would then need to decide who's more important to their feed, their best
friend's sister or Justin Bieber. It may lead to interesting social dynamics
in the same way that Twitters 140-character restriction created new discourse
dynamics.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number)

~~~
Jaruzel
People would just create multiple accounts.

No matter how high you build the wall, someone will always bring a taller
ladder.

~~~
danschumann
Maybe make it cost money to start an account, and you can only follow x00
people whereas it takes x000 to get.. "dissipated"

------
root_axis
There should be an annual twitter holiday where they shut off all blue
checkmarks to celebrate the hapless masses that constitute the bulk of the
social capital behind the checkmark itself.

~~~
MarcellusDrum
The fact that it happened suddenly is why it worked. If it was predetermined,
all the tweets will be about how verified users couldn't tweet (at already
started getting there after a few hours this time as well).

~~~
root_axis
Good point. Set it up to ask /dev/random to pick one day per year.

~~~
traes
Everyone would just make an alternate account and not apply for the checkmark
on it, although I suppose that might still align with your goals.

------
dleslie
It'd be a neat feature to allow blocking all messages from verified accounts.

~~~
elicash
I took a list at who on my follow list is checkmarked and besides a few
friends, it's mostly reporters. So here's a related but separate point:

Something I often do, when I want to retweet a news article in my feed, is
find the reporter who broke it and retweet _their_ account rather than the
person I was following. I think it's good to incentivize original reporting
and therefore good if those folks are given a larger platform. I'd hate for
those folks to lose out.

That said, I'd also be very curious about impact beyond that.

Note: I don't apply this retweet-rule to news that would have been public had
the reporter done nothing. For example, on SCOTUS decision days, while I
_LOVE_ the work SCOTUSBlog does, I don't particularly care who I retweet for
non-analysis breaking news.

~~~
dleslie
I expect the impact would be that it would be less about news and products and
more about what your friends ate for lunch.

------
klyrs
I only read twitter through garbage news sites. Yesterday was almost
interesting. Mostly because I remember getting chain mail "from bill gates"
claiming that he'd enrich me for passing it on, back in the late 90s. Didn't
fall for it then; had to educate grandma. But bitcoin users are that un-savvy
today? Time to make popcorn.

~~~
parliament32
>bitcoin users are that un-savvy today

It's unlikely: the crypto world is savage enough that fools and their money
are quickly parted. Most of the transfers to the address could easily be the
scammers sending themselves money to make it look more legit.

------
thinkingemote
pretty much confirming my hunch that it's not an Eternal September problem
with Twitter, but that it started being shit after Oprah and all the other
celebrities started using it and it being popular as a source of news.

It's not an influx of newbies at all. Social media can be full of literal
clueless newcomers - it just needs to be social and not corporate.

It's why reddit is dying too - everyone suspects it and the actual effect is
less opaque that it's also jumped the shark and is no longer democratically
social but corporate / PR influenced.

~~~
qqn
It's a feedback loop though, whatever comes next will draw the crowds, which
will draw loud voices, which will draw capitalists to form a structure (and
career) out of it. There was a great essay on this topic that shows up here
from time to time, using slightly different words:
[https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths](https://meaningness.com/geeks-
mops-sociopaths).

------
jariel
How does any sane, professional person even use Twitter?

Do people have jobs?

We get quite a ton of email/messages for work, then you maybe have some
browsing interest, then personal family messages - how on earth does anyone
have time for Twitter, unless they are in the press?

I gave it up forever ago. There is absolutely nothing to miss but the tiny
dose of dopamine or however it goes.

There's nothing there.

Nobodies 'Zen Soudbyte' matters, at all.

~~~
thejohnconway
I'm always a little surprised by these sorts of views of Twitter. In my areas,
nearly everyone is there. Twitter is full of Academics, and often the most
successful ones are the heaviest users.

~~~
Barrin92
the question is though, do you get anything out of it by reading all that
stuff. And I mean _actually_ getting something out of it other than just the
feeling you've read something useful?

It's not like anyone actually becomes an academic by following academic
conversation on twitter, or as if one learns science or maths by reading
"mathy" threads on twitter.

I think like news even "high-brow" twitter conversations are essentially just
infotainment. You can read news for four hours a day and you feel informed,
but often you can just drop 90% of it and you don't lose any actual in-depth
knowledge.

~~~
thejohnconway
Sure I do - I get to see what people in various fields are writing and
thinking about at a broad level, which I find interesting. I see the work of
the many artists and creators I follow. I get to see what people think of my
own work, which is the whole point of producing it in the first place.

I don't use Twitter to get in-depth information, and I'm not sure why you'd
think that was the purpose (although people might link to where you can get
that information, obviously).

I'd prefer it if it was an open platform, but it is what it is.

------
s9w
In a similar vein: The social media (in particular Reddit and 4chan) is a
different beast on national US holidays, when all the professional opinion
steering forces are at rest.

~~~
airstrike
I mean, is 4chan ever really any good?

~~~
parliament32
It's one of the last places you can make a post without having people trawl
though your posting history if they dislike something you said. It's an
interesting feature.

~~~
FalconSensei
Also, no downvoting. Just discussions. On Reddit they use downvotes as a way
to disagree

------
qwertox
All this drama made me realize that I'm using Twitter just as much as
Facebook: not at all.

~~~
SkyPuncher
Same here.

I've heard about how much I'm missing out by not using Twitter, yet I've never
felt held back by not having a Twitter account.

~~~
vorpalhex
Read any online newspaper and it's basically just the highlights from twitter
anyways.

------
wGeF7H8Z59y985y
Having quit social media years ago, I’ve accomplished the same exact thing but
on a permanent basis. I highly recommend it. Silence truly is golden.

~~~
jjice
I've been off Twitter and Facebook for years, but I'm still stuck on HN and
Reddit. I'm weening myself off of both of these, but god damn is it hard.
Social media really clogs up my brain.

------
justaman
I've been on twitter almost as long as its been around. I remember when I
first got a blue checkmark after I tied my phone number to my account. At some
point a few years back, that checkmark was removed. There was some rumors that
accounts following certain controversial people had their checkmark removed.

------
parliament32
Someone should write a browser extension to disappear (or at least collapse)
all tweets from and relating to blue-checked accounts. They're pretty much all
either corporate or run by social media managers anyway, not the actual person
they're claiming to be.

~~~
basicallydan
Yes, and they should call it Verifhide.

EDIT: Also, that's not always the case. The author of the piece herself is
Verified and she clearly runs her own account:
[https://twitter.com/WaterSlicer](https://twitter.com/WaterSlicer)

------
mjayhn
Could anyone recommend an easy/good way to quickly mass unfollow a ton of
accounts based on the sort of things they post? Is there anything I can use
that will just unfollow all the political accounts, or checkmarks or anything
like that?

~~~
striking
I use [https://tokimeki-unfollow.glitch.me/](https://tokimeki-
unfollow.glitch.me/). You have to unfollow one-by-one, but I think you could
get a pretty decent pace going if you really tried.

I think the hardest thing here is that you mention "political accounts", and
"political" means something different to everyone. So I think this will
inevitably be a manual process.

------
nickjj
Is anyone else unable to Tweet? It says something like "this message looks
like it might be automated, it's been blocked to protect our users".

I mainly just tweet about tech topics and my account hasn't been compromised.

I don't have a blue check mark but I've had an account for years and have it
linked to a phone number. This is the first time I've seen such a message but
I can't tweet anything.

I opened a support ticket but the ticket auto-response said something along
the lines of "thanks for the feedback, unfortunately we can't individually
reply to every ticket, but be assured your feedback will help Twitter!".

------
jdeibele
If you want to take the trouble to sort people into lists, I reccomend
[https://github.com/KrauseFx/twitter-
unfollow](https://github.com/KrauseFx/twitter-unfollow) It unfollows everybody
you're currently following but moves them onto a list called "Old Follows".
You can then move them onto specific lists.

The nice thing is that you can look at a list and it will be in chronological
order. No "Top view".

I also paid for Tweetbot because it has one killer feature: you can filter
retweets. That cuts down on the echo chamber.

~~~
wafflesraccoon
You can turn retweets off per account with vanilla Twitter now, it's such a
useful feature.

------
bawolff
If it was really that great, one would think the article would be able to
point out some great things that came out of it. Instead it just points to a
bunch of people saying how great it was.

I can't help but feel that twitter uses are kind of a self-hating bunch. Its a
totally optional site where you can follow whomever you want, and the best
thing to happen is for it to break for popular people? I don't understand why
people use twitter if they don't want twitter to work. Nobody is forcing you;
just quit if you don't like it.

------
wutbrodo
I wonder how much of this was covered by "journalists temporarily can't
tweet". I doubt anyone's Twitter experience is made much worse by, eg, Mindy
Kaling's tweets.

------
crazy1van
Personally, I'm the opposite.

The primary reason I use Twitter is to read blue check marks (and other well
known people). Why would I want to know what a random person thinks about an
issue when I could hear from people who have built years of clout on a
subject? I feel the same way in reverse -- why would anyone care what I think
about something when I have no experience or track record on the issue?

------
ibdf
I read the president's tweets as my daily amusement, and the fake Elon Musk's
tweets are present in so many of them. This also happens on YT and comment
sections on other websites. I've always reported them on twitter, but the
reporting categories are so limited that I am sure my report get's lost among
a bunch of nonsense.

------
jimnotgym
Since the blue tick accounts are essentially broadcasters rather than users on
Twitter, I support an occasional reset to zero.

------
zaphar
I use [https://tweetdeck.twitter.com](https://tweetdeck.twitter.com) to view
twitter. I don't follow verified accounts and I filter out retweets so twitter
feels pretty nice to me most days. I didn't even notice the great blue
checkmark blackout.

------
rootsudo
I never knew this was such a big deal. I don't understand Twitter and the
people that really live their lives by it, for it.

These people are all my age, and I've never felt so glad to be so
disconnected. To not understand the memes or be involved in this Twitter
conversation is fantastic.

------
manicdee
I just use Tweetbot. The “authentic” Twitter is a mess.

Also very few accounts I follow are verified so I don’t know what this “cake”
thing is all about.

------
seebetter
They should make Twitter cost $1 per month (non prepaid card) and have the
default setting to block all verified users.

------
slim
Of course, the author of this unironical post has a verified account

------
jacquesm
It was the Twitter equivalent of 'million-short'.

------
codegladiator
> In 1998, folk

Geez can we get to the point ?

~~~
jeffbee
I liked the analogy. The reason Jewel's moronic book existed was not because
she had an exceptional cultural contribution to make, but merely because there
existed a machine that could put books on the rack at Barnes & Noble, and she
was in the machine. The blue checks are the same way: they have the followers
because they have the blue check, not because anything they tweet was worth
reading.

------
fearingreprisal
I'm absolutely convinced that the world would be a better, smarter, more civil
place if Twitter simply didn't exist at all. The tragedy for me is that
whoever hacked Twitter wasted the opportunity to do something that permanently
maimed the platform.

------
bpodgursky
It would actually be cool if this was a regular thing -- the 15th of the month
is officially the Twitter Sabbath, where the blue checks are muted, and only
the voices of the masses are heard.

~~~
csunbird
Verified accounts would just create a secondary accounts and ask people to
follow them too.

------
api
I posted this to some friends:

PSA: Twitter has been very badly hacked. Apparently their internal systems
were compromised allowing posts as all kinds of accounts. So... if your
favorite celebrity, business leader, intellectual, or politician says
something stupid... hmm... actually never mind. I don't see any difference
between hacked Twitter and normal Twitter. Carry on.

