By way of damage assessment, I start with a prescient December 2021 article and DM exchange from a crypto critic and friend of mine, @matthewstoller.
My recommendation is a vibe shift. Now, I know what you're thinking: easy to recommend but hard to pull off. There's good news, tho...
And that good news is that web3 is already on this. The necessary vibe shift was in progress before the bubble even burst, and @balajis's new book is a veritable vibe bellwether in this regard.
Things are looking grim, now. But assuming we can survive the regulatory backlash, I think we got this.
I see what you did there! IMO the counter to this is something like: even if God is a human construct, religions are pretty battle-tested, critical legacy constructs that super smart programmers should maybe not undertake to rewrite from scratch in the hot framework of the moment
Making a judgement call about the greater good that's rooted in a few thousand years of human give-and-take is a qualitatively different thing than making such a call rooted in a bunch of stuff a legitimately brilliant person has gamed out with his or her massive intellect.
I'm pretty EA-friendly on what @tylercowen would call a "mood affiliation" basis, and the vast majority of the people I've met in that world seem to have good intentions and are people I get along with. But I'm not a utilitarian because I reason about ends from a different place.
I'm glad Musk took it over & am irritated about the bluecheck fiasco, but I am also dancing around the flaming dumpster and throwing 40's into it and hollering and banging on garbage can lids, and the more you scream about the chaos the more I lean into it.
You: OMG he's wrecked Twitter!
Me: No just give him a minute... Ok, maybe yeah.
You: DON'T YOU SEE WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE SOCIAL ORDER THAT I HAVE ENJOYED DOMINANCE OVER? IT'S ALL IN RUINS!!!
I have been pro-Musk-takeover, but even I will say this bluecheck thing has been a total fiasco. The icon used to mean two things: 1. Account is who they claim to be, or at least they were when they applied for verification 2. Account has some special privilege or connections
The idea should have been to keep #1 but turn #2 above into “Account is paying us $8/month.” But now BOTH have been replaced by the $8/month signal. It’s very bad UX because it changed the meaning of that prominent UI element instantly.
We’re collectively going through a UI retraining, as if the X in the toolbar of a window now suddenly meant “make the window bigger” and not “close the window.” It’s so bad, and so needless. Not really possible for me to imagine this means anything other than “bad at software.”
I don't think it's damage, tho. The whole "SFB is legit" mentality was fundamentally an expression of a particular approach to crypto that we might call integrationist, i.e. turn coins into yet another asset that's governed by the same rules & norms as TradFi. However...
...if this is what we really want, isn't regular TradFi a better option than a "these guys are legit & are very connected & professional & have the right team" version of crypto? There's another way, though:
Maybe we just don't do the "hey guys are real pros & are blessed by all the right TradFi institutions" thing, & instead find crypto-native solutions (e.g. on-chain provable reserves) for many TradFi problems?
As of @elonmusk's purchase of Twitter, there's a whole new crowd of users trying to coordinate their exit. It's 2022 tho, & we have a place we can put our social graph where we can own & control it and any social platform can use it: the blockchain. jonstokes.com/p/the-billion-…
In this followup to my article, "The Billion User Table," I propose taking the next step and moving from "the blockchain is the users table" to "the blockchain is the social graph." thenetworkstate.com/the-billion-us…
This piece is Ethereum and @ensdomains specific, but it could be done with any chain that supports smart contracts. There are two proposals, each trying to balance simplicity, accessibility, and privacy in different ways.
Many viral tweets about the $8 bluecheck thing are really weird & I can’t get my mind around it + also can’t get over it. I mean, presumably verification will still actually verify ppl (w/ the added power of credit card verification!), so why r some in hysterics about imposters?
Help me understand this, plz. Maybe he announced that he’s just giving a bluecheck to anyone who pays & there is no more verification going on, & I missed it? I dunno… the freak-outs over “anyone can now pay to impersonate famous people” just seem truly demented & dumb to me.
Well, if this is indeed what the plan is, then I would say that would be very bad & dumb of Musk. This seems insane?