Ask HN: If you were in Musk's position, how would you improve Twitter instead?

I wouldn&#x27;t charge the content creators for one, they are the lifeblood of the platform. I would do the opposite, I would let them charge their fans with membership tiers and such. I would also provide an API for content creators to be able to authorize their fans to access content outside of Twitter, basically turning the site into a membership portal. Like Patreon, but with better discoverability, as the paid content would be an add-on on top of Twitter as it is now.<p>I would keep the short text format, but I would also venture into short video.<p>I would start catering to the adult industry.

I would accumulate shares slowly, not be an asshole, and work to get a seat on the board and communicate with the other big institutional &#x2F; activist holders who control the board seats. I would use my experience and reputation as a technologist and entrepreneur to do deep dives with the CEO, who was the former CTO, to get a feeling for what has been tried, what has been rejected, and what future strategies are being considered.<p>it is possible that twitter isnt really amenable to being a growth company, and this is borne out by the stagnant stock price and the lack of top line revenue growth. in that case I would definitely try to gradually reduce the workforce to support more of a lean mode of operation, and try to entice young, smart programmers and product managers into kind of an incubator to see if anything really new with a wider or different appeal (like TikTok) could be built and rolled out on the cheap. the new ideas that take off are not necessarily different in kind than the existing social apps, they just have something that makes them ergonomic and addictive, and you have to try a lot of things and maybe they will take off.<p>I think instead of trying to add new products into existing apps, it might sometimes be a better idea from a marketing POV to instead roll out or aquire a new idea as a distinct app. See insta vs Facebook. You cant make Facebook cool by just cramming instagram inside of it.<p>This measured approach would allow him to pay maybe half what he did in terms of valuation, and gradually increase his stake from the 10% range to something controlling if and only if the internal governance situation was suited to it, and the business prospects could be ascertained.

He should be out of day to day running of twitter. Hire someone. Hire an adult. He can use twitter (he did buy it) but pay an adult to deal with it. He is clearly out of his element.<p>Bring back vine or some other short video type thing.<p>Back out the dumb pay for a check mark idea. Or at least change it. As it sits anyone can get a check mark. Blue check marks should mean the person is verified not that they paid 8 dollars.<p>Support creators. Give them a way to use the platform to extend their reach. I would have to think more here<p>Journalists love twitter. Given them useful tools and you can charge them money.<p>That is where I would start.

I mean, given the extra debt servicing required as a result of the acquisition, it&#x27;s not inconceivable that returning it to profitability is simply _impossible_.<p>Realistically, the only way for Twitter to increase revenue significantly is probably to add users. But the trouble there is, it&#x27;s _Twitter_. It has likely already more or less saturated the market for _people who like things like Twitter_. It&#x27;s really hard to see a world where everyone in the developed world uses Twitter, but that&#x27;s probably what you need.<p>(This has been Twitter&#x27;s problem for a long time, IMO; Twitter execs looked at things like Facebook and TikTok and Instagram and said &quot;~everyone in the developed world uses those things, thus they can be made to use our thing&quot; without necessarily understanding how different it was. Twitter should probably never have been a $40bn business).

I would design the algorithms so that they tended to amplify accurate information and civil discussion. Here are some essays I have written on the subject:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;deliberati.io&#x2F;give-truth-the-advantage&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;deliberati.io&#x2F;give-truth-the-advantage&#x2F;</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;deliberati.io&#x2F;moderation-as-consensus&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;deliberati.io&#x2F;moderation-as-consensus&#x2F;</a>

I’m pretty sure calm rational thinking wouldn’t have put me into an untenable situation in the first place so I’m going to have to assume not me. Let me take a crack at it. 1) What is twitter? Public square? Publication? Ad platform? Well how do they make money? (If you’re putting down $44B you at least need to know where the money comes from) So, Ad platform. Profitable? No. Crap. Opportunity for eliminating waste? Maybe. $1.5B worth? (Just servicing the acquisition debt costs $1B&#x2F;yr) No. Pass. 2) ok, but still want. Fine. make a reasonable offer with contingency clauses. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to do that your lawyers do —and will (unless you tell them not to. Don’t do that) 3) shit, you ignored one and two. Ok well at least don’t piss off the advertisers any further by like firing the whole quality and safety team… annnd you did that. 4) ok we can still save this, slow and steady, figure out the lay of the land, lean into the positive, trim the negative. No? Ok then just go off half cocked, fire anyone you lay eyes on, personally moderate all tweets. Good luck to ya.

Stop tweeting.<p>Hire a CEO who has a vision of where to take the company so that it can be profitable and useful to society.

1) Revenue solved: Allow limited paid ads after tweets from commercial accounts So, people who follow Starbucks, for example, would see paid Starbucks ads after Starbuck tweets, say 20% of the time. If you hate the ads, you can unfollow Starbucks.<p>2) Moderation&#x2F;Cancelling solved: Allow Twitter users to sign-up&#x2F;opt-out of content moderation &quot;jury duty.&quot; You&#x27;d get &quot;Does this Tweet lie or offend standards?&quot; on flagged Tweets. If enough people say &quot;yes&quot;, the tweet could be red-flagged, blocked or the Tweeter put on timeout, etc.<p>3) Faceless Ban Bots solved: Implement a content moderation &quot;Court of Appeals&quot; where a blocked&#x2F;banned tweet or account could be appealed, again with Twitter users acting as jury. You&#x27;d at least get to know why something was banned and get a chance to appeal your case to fellow humans.

I would create a system where big companies could interact with followers for a price. Example: Starbucks could send their followers coupons or giveaways. Since the users are followers they can actively post tweets to them instead of ads which can be blocked.

Look, it&#x27;s a lot of work to read a tweet, get outraged, and then call someone a ***. So I would build Twitter Red: for $4.20 a month, it will use AI deep learning to analyze tweets and form the appropriate response: ie, calling them a ***, ****, *****, or even a ******. Twitter Red Gold ($6.90 a month) will also suggest they **** themselves in the *** with a *********.

1- authentication by authority: don&#x27;t give check marks to people, give check marks to organizations, and they can give to their associated humans (employees&#x2F;members etc), as they fit, and they lose it if they leave the organization.<p>this puts the burden of the verification (and content, by proxy) on the authenticating body, not on the platform. Twitter simply cannot verify all people, but it can verify the much smaller subset of organizations or have further organization verification even.<p>Who is this @ElonMusk guy? I don&#x27;t know, but the &quot;?&quot; mark next to his name says that his account is verified by @Tesla, which in turn was verified by @Nasdaq, who might provide social media to all listed companies, for a fee.<p>@JoeBiden? He was once Verified by the@USSenate, then @VP, and now the @POTUS.<p>After retirement, it&#x27;s upto them if they want to continue provide authentication or pretend like @DonaldTrump doesn&#x27;t exist.<p>Youtube could provide Authentication for youtubers, Newspapers providing authentication for its journalists, etc.<p>What about random ol&#x27; me? I am an unaffiliated noob, so I could maybe get authentication from my university as a part of being an Alumni... or maybe I could verify my own damn self for $8 like Elon is trying to sell... but at a lower tier to authority led verification (but higher tier than the plebs, I guess)<p>Twitter could sell verification packages to organization for like $X for #Y associated account verifications or whatever.<p>Similarly, to advertisers, offer packages of verified organizations accounts to advertise against. A bloc of all authors verified by Big 5 Publishing is $X, if you want further granularity, it costs further... and you roll the dice on their comments.<p>Pressure is now on the verifying authority to keep their verified accounts in check, and if an author spews shit, their account remains and comments remain, but drops out of the package after losing verification, so advertiser are not affected.<p>that&#x27;s my $0.02, haven&#x27;t thought it all through yet.<p>E&amp;OE.

Bring in new features. Pre-Musk twitter only brought one new feature per year.<p>Reduce bots, spam.<p>Make sure that verified users are not able to change their usernames anyhow they want (currently you will find hundreds of elon musk verified accounts).<p>Improve twitter mobile app (less bloat unlike reddit app)<p>Use crypto payments to pay for twitter blue. Crypto payments meaning not only BTC and Dogecoin but privacy coins like Monero, Dash, Zcash etc.<p>Have Twitter Blue Pro, so that users will get no ads (currently twitter blue gets half ads), first access to new features, something like substack articles where twitter blue pro users will be able to read blogs created by twitter users (tiwtter is a &#x27;micro-blogging&#x27; platform afterall) etc.<p>Bring new features which are aggregated from other apps like (this point is not that good)<p>a.) Unlimited video upload- youtube<p>b.) Stories-Instagram<p>c.) Short videos- tiktok<p>d.) Threads-Reddit etc<p>Reduce excessive tracking of users on its site and app.<p>Try to attract non-english, non-western users. Most non-english audience does not even know&#x2F;care about twitter. They are all on whatsapp, youtube, tiktok etc.<p>Have NSFW, gambling and generally immoral stuff promotion to earn money on the sidelines. (The NSFW stuff will be opt-in by default to make sure that twitter is &#x27;family friendly)<p>P2P transfer of fund from users to content creators on twitter itself like Patreon, Brave BAT twitter tipping etc. Twitter will get like 5% cut from the tips.<p>Have alternative payment methods like UPI (india), SEPA (europe) and not only card payment via stripe.

- E2EE on everything, including the PM<p>- Remove phone # requirement and invent a better way to verify, since phone # -beside the privacy concerns- barely prevents the bot&#x2F;spam issue.<p>- Improve the UI<p>- Create an interest-based system, I don&#x27;t want for example to read politics news when I&#x27;m an artist, or read medicine related news when I&#x27;m a programmer, and so on.

- Make no changes to moderation policy.<p>- Expose the true number of bots and expose the deception of past leadership. Be specific on who knew what and how they obscured it.<p>- Fire more than 50% - this is not enough and I suspect another tranche of layoffs is not far off.<p>- Focus on user growth, acknowledge that revenue will take a hit in the short term.<p>- Slash all advertising costs. The cost per click on Twitter is insane relative to the outcome. You wanna woo advertisers? Cut their CPC in half.