Lanier proposes that Twitter (or analogous publishing platforms) should enable or require writers to form groups under which they public – so that they share a reputation and have incentive to police the behavior of their members, analogous to some financial co-ops.
This is an intriguing proposal, but it’s unclear to me whether this discards some of the more attractive features of Twitter or how it helps Twitter the corporation. However, I do think that it identifies one of the big problems with Twitter (lack of structure, ease of trolling/harassment), which could contribute to its eventual downfall.
do you want the thesis written in the post (and not just linking to an article)? Lanier presents a serious thesis – it is a bit hand-wavey and not anything we have the ability to implement, but there is still plenty of material to discuss the pros/cons of.
If the title doesn’t present a debate topic, at least copy a bit form the article to the “body” so we can get a gist of whats being argued without reading the whole article.