Twitter in my world

I noticed over the past month that Elon has been working on the back end side of twitter and stopping the bots spamming out Twitter feeds and stuff like that. When he gets to the front end development of twitter, I have some ideas. I know what I want from the platform.

If I was to design the twitter app it would look different to the way it is now. 

The top half of the twitter app would have a fixed screen, the whole app would reconfigure itself at the press of a button. The fixed screen would allow you to watch videos on twitter and scroll through the feed that the same time. There would also be a button below the screen that turns it into a virtual hand held games console, it would look a bit like the old game boy. 

If twitter wasn't in game mode, the screen would show  your stats like how many people are looking at your profile, between the stats it would show the twitter logo with scan lines and slight TV static. The screen would also allow you to connect to your youtube app or netflix app so you would be tweeting and reading while you're watching videos at the same time. If you play a video in your feed you can create a queue of videos that play in sequence one after the other on the screen and still scroll through your feed at the same time. If you get bored of the feed, just press the play button and it would turn your phone into a hand held games console with at least 5 fun retro games to play. 

As you scroll and press on people's tweets, it would make paper ruffling sound effects and when you press the play game mode button, it would play the sound of a panel sliding across. 

I'm not saying people would like this design feature, I only represent myself. 

Twitter Files

Twitter is a social media platform that lets the whole world have a big conversation. Elon Musk recently bought twitter and became the director of the company. 

Twitter has been wrestling with the fine line of 'censorship' and  'freedom of Speech' for at least ten years now. Censorship is very important; not too long ago I saw this guy eat a ghost-chilli as an internet challenge. Ghost-chillis are bred to be very concentrated with capsaicin so you could cut it into 8 pieces and the pieces would make 8 pots of stew very spicy. They were not intended to be eaten like berries. Those sort of things should be censored because people may copy it and cause harm to themselves. The other thing that should be censored is defamation, if people lie about a company and cause some of the employees to lose their jobs, things like that. 

In recent days Elon Musk has been exposing the abuse of censorship. They were using Censorship to silence people they didn't like and to cover up scandal. I don't know how far this tunnel goes but it is already very dark. He has been digging deep into the company records. 

He has coined the term Twitter Files.  

What November 22 means to me

At the start of November, me and my family celebrated Guy Fawkes day known as Bonfire Night. I was reading the history of the day, I didn't realise that king James was a descendant of Henry the 7th (Henry the 8th's father). He descended from Henry the 7th's 3rd Child, we was like a cousin of the Tudors. King James Stuart curated the king James Bible, the first Christian Bible that was translated from Latin to English. Guy Fawkes is the celebration of the failure to blow up King James. We light fireworks and burn wood and feast outside. It is the English equivalent to the American thanks giving, a feast in the later part of Autumn. 

The theme of the second half of November was the Qatar world cup and Twitter handover. Elon walked into the twitter headquarters with a sink and said "let that sink in", that is the kind of joke I would say. For about 10 years, Twitter has been wrestling with Freedom of Speech and Censorship, both paradigms are very important. You should have the freedom to express your views but also adhere to the laws, deformation through lying, conspiring to cause a public nuisance and do violence, there is a law for all those things. Twitter was censoring many people to keep their sponsors happy but sometimes they were restricting the freedom of speech. 

During the last third of November, the Qatar world cup started, it is very unusual to have a world cup in autumn and winter, the summer time is off limits to them because it is too hot. The players could get heat stroke or something like that. It is nice to have a world cup in winter when it is cold and dark in my part of the world. The darkness can really mess with your head sometimes. 

 

Censorship Standoff

Elon Musk's Purchase of the Twitter social media platform has been completed recently. I'm given the impression that Elon is looking to increase the freedom of speech and unblock users that were considered a mischief; they wrote politically incorrect things and spread false rumours or conspiracies. They were censored by the company. I don't think it was Twitter's fault, I think they were worried about keeping their sponsors happy, they're a business at the end of the day. 

This will be a tricky one, how do you stop people spreading harmful info yet be a totally free speech platform at the same time. Perhaps they can have fact bots that tell people their message is false but leave the original message up there, I don't know. 

I hope Apple doesn't block the twitter app. Twitter hasn't changed for me because I don't follow a lot of these profiles anyway. I just write messages and hope I'm not just writing to no one. 

Half of November

We are half way through November and the theme this month was very much about Elon's mind set. They think he was being reckless and not thinking straight. I would say it's because they don't listen to him. He is concerned about the wellbeing of mankind in the near future. He wants humans to live on two planets so civilization will continue if one planet is destroyed by a disaster. He has been warning for years about allowing artificial intelligence to self code and self improve because it could become self aware and more intelligent than people. He has also been openly concerned about freedom of speech being crushed by corporate political correctness because modern civilization relies on the freedom of speech. That is why he bought twitter and paid more than it's value. 

I use Twitter a lot so I have many ideas that may improve the platform. I would make Twitter play, a collection of games on twitter. One game would be like flappy bird but with the twitter logo. The other game would be twitter lottery, a weekly raffle where there are several prizes, the cheapest prize would be another ticket to play, the highest prize would be $5 million dollars. Then there would be a networked top down survival game, there would be a small box on the game for advertising. It would also be nice to make Twitter work with Chromecast so you can play twitter videos on your TV. I would also make the background colour of twitter slowly change and learn which colour makes the users stay on twitter the most. It would be different for each person. 

I would also make Twitter coins, if you post 100 tweets in one day, you get a twitter coin. You could use 1 twitter coin to make your tweet appear at the top of a reply list. I would also get twitter to ask questions to give you ideas for tweets. It would say "do you think there will be world peace soon?" You would answer and it would say shall I tweet your view?". Some people don't know where to start. I start with good morning. 

 The ability to completely turn off direct messages would also be nice, I don't want to be contacted when I follow people back out of courtesy. It would also be nice if twitter displayed links to my blog graphically like the other social platforms. 

What April 2022 Means to me

In April 2022 I moved to new home nearby. I forgot how hard and stressful it is to move home. I used almost the whole 3 weeks time window to move. When I moved home I saw some old books I had that were stowed away in boxes and remembered how interesting they were to read. 

very often when I was going to sleep I would read articles on the NASA website, I wanted to know what all those robots scattered through the solar system had discovered. There are so many of them out there, Juno, Curiosity, James Webb, Hubble, Perseverance, Insight, voyager 1 and 2 to name a few. 

My son turned 3 years old in April, I love my family very much. I hope they enjoy our new home and have many happy memories of the coming years ahead. My son has an amazing birthday and I am very proud of him. 

Elon musk bought Twitter for $44 billon. It is very hard to imagine that money, it is one thousand million times 44. Even one billion or one million dollars is a lot of money to me. Even half a million dollars is a lot of money to me. It will be very interesting to see what Elon will do to Twitter. 

Johnny Depp was suing his former wife Amber Heard for deformation. Her claims of abuse had caused him to lose acting work. He claims that she was the one that was abusive not him and managed to gather some evidence to support his case. The court case was very public and on the news quite often.