Relying on a for-profit company for our communications with one another, a company to whom we pay nothing -- this is doomed to failure. For thousands of years,

Relying on a for-profit company for our communications with one another, a company to whom we pay nothing -- this is doomed to failure. For thousands of years, we've relied on various forms of public and private postal service. The public ones were funded and run by whatever government, and the private ones provided a service for their customers in exchange for payment. Phone companies have mostly been technically private but heavily regulated, and funded directly by their customers. That all worked well enough. In contrast, what we have here with Twitter is a system where the customers are the advertisers. The communications on the platform are a byproduct. In this scenario how could we expect Twitter to act any differently? We need something way different and we tech folk can be part of the solution. Distributed open platforms with public funding and which welcome regulation -- this seems like a direction with some hope. But I will not be betting on a few do-gooders at Twitter having a little bit of thought for the future acting as our savior.