I've often thought that if they 1) allow anyone to verify their account and 2) let verified accounts choose to only (or mainly) interact with other verified accounts, it can make it more obvious which accounts are anonymous or bots. I think it should work unless/until the anonymous and bot accounts figure out how to break the KYC process.

> 2) let verified accounts choose to only (or mainly) interact with other verified accounts

That is already a thing if you are verified and one of the reasons why "blue checkmark for $2" (Elon's plan) won't work and will make many verified people unhappy. They don't want even more peasants and "cloud chasers" in their verified timeline.

Hence different color. I also don’t agree. I think most blue checkmarks equally hate the spam and anonymous hate. In a public square, we can tell you’re a robot or if you’re not and say vile things, you’re unlikely to stay anonymous.

Yes, I'm all for adding layers of social friction, or frankly, reducing the emotional distance. I remember reading a book, I think called On Killing, talking about the psychology of war and violence. In it, he mentioned how it gets easier to kill from a larger emotional distance. Or in other words, it can be harder and harder to harm someone the closer we feel to them. Being able to put on a digital mask and act as a persona can lead to this (it can also lead to opening up more, too), but I at least want to know if someone is wearing a mask or not.

I think the challenge is "verified" = celebrity, or verified fame, and really I want it to equal verified humanity. Maybe that means the verified humanity gets a different name, who knows. There could be two tiers, allowing the verified famous people to interact with each other and others to just know who went through the KYC process.

Yes. But the opacity on how to get verified is ridiculous. And Twitter has used revoking a blue check mark as a punishment. As if the person that was once verified is no longer verified. It’s ridiculous.

Yeah, it has confused me that it's easier to verify one's humanity on dating apps than it is on Twitter.

Right. It’s like removing spam.

Frankly, I think Reddit could do the same and give more weight to upvotes from those that prove they’re real.

It could help with disinformation problems and with finding signal.

I remember reading an article where the CEO of Myspace said one of the main reasons Facebook won was because of its real name policy.

<edit>I found the quote [0], which I had quoted in my essay "Why Twitter Should Verify More Users: Towards a More Human Web" [1]:

> Facebook’s killer feature was that it replicated the real world by forcing people to use their real names, whereas MySpace users used pseudonymous handles

[0]: https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-myspace-ceo-explains-why-1...

[1]: https://medium.com/hackmentalhealth/why-twitter-should-verif...

</edit>

I know one of the things I loved about Facebook was interacting with university-verified humans. Then it got flooded with more and more spam accounts.

I hope either these platforms or the next generation of platforms realize there is a strong opportunity for real-name policy platforms. It won't be the whole market, but I'm personally really tired of anonymous accounts. I mostly come to HN because there aren't many real-name platforms that talk about these things. Maybe that's because lots of people don't want it. I guess I just don't buy that argument. I think there's a niche for sure.

Interesting. Thanks!

Go follow all the big crypto/NFT accounts on a fresh twitter account. You'll be able to see all of the easily solved bot abuse.

Elon said this. I don’t know what anyone else is saying.

He must think it will work?