CAN DOGECOIN FIX TWITTER’S BOT PROBLEM? Newly relevant since, as Stephen reports, Musk says his purchase is held up over Twitter’s claim that it’s less than 5% bots. I am enthusiastic about cryptocurrencies, but boy is the bot problem more easily solvable for 99% of people:

1. Make it so everyone can pay $1 a month via credit card with a name for a blue check verification (instead of it being some weird pseudo-endorsement granted by our unseen overlords).
2. Make it so users can choose to see only blue checks if they want, or blue checks and things they retweet. Or both, whatever.
3. Twitter gets millions in revenue, people are spared bots if they choose, and anonymous speech is still fine and available for folks who might want it (like Libs of TikTok) and who offer interesting material. Any blue checks lying about who they are are committing credit card fraud.

Or some variety of that, anyway. Practically every legitimate political problem with social media is solved if you let users choose their filters rather than leave it to companies to choose what you can I can see. The political problem this does not solve is silencing your opponents “disinformation,” which is why nobody seems to want to suggest this most obvious of solutions.