37 ms·

Jack Dorsey has regrets about building Twitter

226 points by _dh54 5y ago

jdrc 5y ago
Email is still there, still decentralized in principle (which matters). Why not build identity on top of it, extend the protocol. And while you re at it, add notifications, which are a major reason why people use phones. Not professional enough for "corporates"? who cares
- bklaasen 5y ago
  Have you explored Delta Chat? https://delta.chat/en/ https://delta.chat/en/
  - jdrc 5y ago
    no but yea, something like that
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Email is less and less decentralised. Unless you send email as a big provider, you'll risk being blocked.
  - jdrc 5y ago
    they block it because they can. if more and more (important) people hosted their own mail, blockers wouldnt block so easily. Email is still in principle decentralized
- Vladimof 5y ago
  What I don't like about email is that it is required to create accounts almost everywhere... Reddit and HN are two exceptions. And now Google requires a phone number to create an email? I know that there are services like https://www.gmailnator.com https://www.gmailnator.com and https://www.receivesms.org/us-numbers/us/ https://www.receivesms.org/us-numbers/us/, but it doesn't always work.
  - majewsky 5y ago
    There exist mail providers other than Gmail (allegedly).
    - Vladimof 5y ago
      You can also host your own, maybe. I just don't like the way all major providers are heading.
      - everforward 5y ago
        This is a common refrain when discussing email, but modern, useful email has an exceptionally high maintenance overhead, primarily due to anti-spam features. Running a basic email server is relatively easy. Running a mail server with good deliverability guarantees is very hard. You can end up blacklisted just because someone in the same IP block as you is sending spam. Your only solution will be to change IPs repeatedly until you get one with a good reputation, up until someone starts spamming again. You can be blacklisted because your domain or IP simply don't have enough historical data to determine whether it's likely spam. Often there won't be a clear answer to why you're blacklisted. If Gmail sends your stuff to the spam box, good luck getting Google to tell you why. It's not insurmountable; you can do it, but be prepared to invest an absurd amount of time setting it up and trying to set up automated delivery tests to make sure you haven't been blacklisted since you set it up.
        Vladimof 5y ago
        > Often there won't be a clear answer to why you're blacklisted. If Gmail sends your stuff to the spam box, good luck getting Google to tell you why. Yeah, they make it hard to get an email address semi-anonymously and then when you create your own server, they block you for "spam"
  - riffic 5y ago
    My community college created my Gmail account for me and they needed a lot more information than just a phone number to enroll up. What I'm trying to say here is that we can get email or other identities other than the ones we make on our own. Perhaps we should be doing this identity-tying more often? Many people get email addresses from their employer and aren't expected to move those addresses around when they change jobs.
- tester756 5y ago
  Email has terrible withdrawal support, or I'm not aware of anything that handles it. For example I had address@email-hosting.com and after a few years I stopped using it after some years I tried to sign into my account and realized that it doesn't exist and to my shock I was able to create account with that address again! Email in my opinion lacks of "broadcast account being closed" option or something like that
  - jdrc 5y ago
    domains do that too It's good. we dont need perfect systems, neither should an email be tied to our real existence or our whole existence . "Real name" identities was a mistake. Semi-anonymous, expendable identity is better
zeruch 4y ago
What he regrets is being outmaneuvered by other, more apex jackwagons in the industry. He's a schmuck.
pmoriarty 5y ago
Another source, which doesn't require javascript to view: https://nitter.net/jack/status/1510314535671922689 https://nitter.net/jack/status/1510314535671922689
deleted 5y ago
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alecbz 5y ago
I don’t know if he’s saying he regrets it on net, just that he regrets the extent to which it’s contributed to this centralization.
simonswords82 5y ago
He could do us all a favour and shut Twitter down if he feels that strongly about it. There probably is not a more polarising platform out there.
- lawtalkinghuman 5y ago
  One might think the employees, investors and users might have some issues with "just shut the entire thing down".
  - rvz 5y ago
    To be fair, they actually had the guts to shut down Vine. They know that they can do the same for Twitter and sunset it. Perhaps it's for the best to save everyone from themselves.
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      They shut down vine for business reasons not because of any soul searching. Business is business. 99.9% of companies will NEVER shut down over ethical reasons.
- paulpauper 5y ago
  this is not 2007
  - simonswords82 5y ago
    I don't understand the point you are attempting to make?
    - paulpauper 5y ago
      he doesn't control twitter anymore and when he was CEO it's not like he could have shut it down given that there was a board of directors and shareholders that would have opposed it. HIs only recourse would have been to resign.
paulpauper 5y ago
If you regret it, give back the money you earned from it, presumably the stock
- ARandomerDude 5y ago
  Give it back to the company he's complaining about? That would make the problem worse, not better.
  - ergocoder 5y ago
    Oh no. We are stuck. Better keep the billions then. There is absolutely no other way.
    - ARandomerDude 5y ago
      That's not at all what I said. I said giving it to Twitter is not the solution.
    - SkinTaco 5y ago
      Hahahahaha
- traskjd 5y ago
  Who to?
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    to charity. Chuck Feeney , the founder of Duty Free, who did just that.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    There are plenty of non-profits who fight against this "new world" he helped create. The EFF is just one example of many.
    - moralestapia 5y ago
Shared404 5y ago
If only twitter were just a Mastodon instance. There's a way to undo the harm he's already done, but I don't know if he can make that sort of change at this point.
- deleted 5y ago
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- smoldesu 5y ago
  Twitter tried committing to some decentralization thing with their "BlueSky" project, but it never went anywhere. I think the best solution would have been giving Twitter a read-only RSS interface alongside an ActivityPub implementation, but I'm guessing that solution didn't appeal to investors all that much.
  - pfraze 5y ago
    It actually just got funded as its own org this year [1]. It was a community until that happened. 1. https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/2-28-2022-how-it-started https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/2-28-2022-how-it-started
    - riffic 5y ago
      lol, they may have just hired you on, Paul, but the project as a whole is vaporware. It deserves a healthy amount of criticism and skepticism. A community is a generous thing to call a bunch of Discord channels. Twitter Inc could have had a seat at the table with the W3C federated social web peeps but decided to ignore everything and do its own thing. In 2008, Evan Prodromou himself gave us something the cool kids will use anyway (the Fediverse), despite what gets cooked up at bs web <dot> xyz. EDIT: Bluesky is an embodiment of anti-competitive Not-Invented-Here Syndrome. It should be shunned. If you want to develop open protocols, the proper channels would be to play within the friendly confines of a group like the W3C. If you want to know how I really feel, I feel like Bluesky is destined to fail due to its untrustworthy origins (no offense to the people involved, Golda is an amazing person and has been doing her best so far).
mehrdada 5y ago
Sensationalist title, not what he said at all.
rdxm 5y ago
[dead]
giraffe_lady 5y ago
Acknowledgement isn't repentance, or even an apology. If he thinks his actions caused harm, this isn't even half of a first step towards rectifying it.
mulmen 5y ago
It’s amazing how this guy only grows a conscience when he’s powerless to do anything about it.
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  You may be right, but I doubt he's the only one with that failing.
- tmp_anon_22 5y ago
  *when he has stopped being financially reliant on it. Facebook, Twitter, and Google, all had alternative paths where they make significantly less money but are much more of a positive influence on the internet and society at large. They chose money - and here we are. I struggle to think of a single organization (even Mozilla) in their class of company that did NOT choose the money. And it makes me think the financial structure of all these companies forces them from conception to use the money path.
  - prepend 5y ago
    It’s arguable whether apple would have made more money by reducing the price on their devices and maximizing ad revenue from customer behavior (ie android). I kind of feel like they made their decisions based on Jobs’ hardware profit margins strategy that worked well before service or data profit margins. Also, although not a company I feel like Apache has turned down multiple opportunities to sell out and kept to their principles.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  He's not truly powerless though. He's got plenty of money that can be put to use by lobbying for anti-trust, pro-privacy legislation and stronger regulations on social media companies.
  - deleted 5y ago
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arcticbull 5y ago
Does he though? Jack likely regrets losing control of twitter about 3 separate times. This feels like the outrage of the moment, one he can capitalize on to get more folks also regretting Jack losing control of twitter about 3 separate times. At most this has a feeling of rose colored glasses. Man the past sure was better except for, you know, everything about it.
- Eric_WVGG 5y ago
  hm, I disagree with that. I think all signs point to Jack being a true techno-utopian of the old 90's Wired magazine era. If that’s true, then it makes perfect sense that his tech-hippy leanings would be incompatible with turning Twitter into the FAANG-grade blockbuster that his investors were banking on. And crypto of course slots neatly into that same Wired/Jaron-Lanier/early-Burning-Man sect. I think this is a case of the simplest explanation being the likeliest: He's telling the truth, and he's a huge dork.
evocatus 5y ago
More apologies to dress one's self up with morality and a tinge of nostalgia, with nothing substantive actually being done about it. Typical white liberal behavior. Burn in hell.
- sydthrowaway 5y ago
  What is the alternative? Suggest solutions.
  - tonguez 5y ago
    help build an alternative that isn’t designed solely around accomplishing neoconservative objectives like the dissemination and amplification war propaganda, and general subversion of democracy by inciting racial division, removal of democratically elected leaders, etc
  - altdataseller 5y ago
    Why? Jack is the one that is publicly regretting it. He’s the one that needs to propose solutions. And if he is working on a solution, then tell us that solution or what he’s planning to do
  - rakoo 5y ago
    Implement ActivityPub inside twitter to make it Just Another Fediverse Instance. Jack has (had?) the authority to do it, unlike the GP who can't fix the problem individually from their laptop
  - evocatus 5y ago
    For him to stop exploiting his privilege as a rich white man to farm social credit and shut up.
  - slowmovintarget 5y ago
    Elon, for all his bluster, built an industry with the goal of getting humanity to Mars. Recently, he's sold off his mansions as being unneeded excess. There's no end to charitable work that can use the funds. He could lobby for affordable housing in San Fran, fighting all those "nimby" interests. He could lobby against the military industrial complex, against the revolving door between Wall Street and the White House, for clean energy, for non-GMO natural foods (and against Bill Gates's soylent projects). You know, stuff like that. He'd only need to pick one to make a difference. Or maybe... Lobby for the destruction of the engagement algorithms. Granted, this would make a great many powerful people very angry, and they'd turn on him like sharks on a wounded school-mate, but it would be more honorable than complaining after the massive payday.
dataangel 5y ago
I think the nostalgia is really rooted in the fact that there was a stronger filter for who was on the Internet back then. You had to be willing to put in more time, you had to understand more things, it was harder to use. You were much more likely to be a tech enthusiast or an academic if you were on the Internet even up until ~2008. I feel like smartphones are the real September that never ended, and social media just lowered the barrier further. People were blogging before that but even setting up a blog was harder than writing a Facebook post or a tweet. There are upsides to the new world though. That filter wasn't exclusively good. Computers were a lot more expensive. Poorer communities lacked access. People without tech savvy are often still pretty smart and have good points to make.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  I don't fully agree. One thing is having a built-in filter, but the other thing is encouraging harmful behavior. Not only has the filter now been removed, but the new entrants have been encouraged (through algorithms which promote divisive content) to produce and consume harmful content because it increases "engagement". There was a period of time where social media was just starting out where the filter has essentially been removed (anyone can easily join and start producing & consuming content) but harmful content wasn't yet encouraged. Social media was about keeping up with your friends' content, and while I'm sure harmful & divisive content was present, you had to explicitly seek it out (by liking/following the right accounts). Nowadays all social media uses algorithms that promote content that will yield the maximum amount of "engagement" on your part so you increase the time spend on the platform and the amount of ads watched.
  - dijonman2 5y ago
    The definition of harmful content is a big sticking point with me. Engaging in civil discourse on a hot topic typically ends with one side being accused of something heinous. That’s not harmful. That’s blatant censorship.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      Indeed there's no clear answer as to what content is "harmful", which is why I'm not advocating for censorship but merely to let the user be in control of what they see. Currently, the algorithm will prioritize content that produces the most "engagement", including even content that you otherwise have no link with and don't follow the user who posted it. Divisive, outrageous, hateful or blatantly fake content will typically generate tremendous amounts of engagement (as people start arguing over it) as opposed to mundane content such as updates from your friends. There's also no way to have "civil discourse" when the algorithm prioritizes the hottest takes as opposed to more reasonable arguments.
mise_en_place 5y ago
It seems like a sour grapes moment, he would never have said that while still at the helm of Twitter. I still have more respect for Mark Zuckerberg, who in practice did more for freedom of speech in comparison, though he too capitulated to the whims of a vocal minority. That is the purpose of freedom of speech, to prevent the tyranny of the majority’s opinions from receiving outsize importance and visibility
- doctor_eval 5y ago
  Honestly, looking at political discourse today, I could only agree that the supposed “tyranny of the majority” has been replaced by a tyranny of the minority. Freedom of speech doesn’t imply the freedom to be heard. It just means you shouldn’t go to jail for saying something stupid. But now we have a million stupid people demanding the right to scream at us. And they are using that right for their own material betterment, at the expense of everything, most especially the truth.
  - deleted 5y ago
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micromacrofoot 5y ago
regretting it all the way to the bank
paxys 5y ago
The internet used to be low-level infrastructure, now it is a collective global consciousness. The "old days" weren't better or worse, they were just completely different. Decentralization simply does not serve the reason that most people go online for today.
rubyist5eva 5y ago
After he made his millions and exited. Sorry can’t take this guy seriously. What a wank
da39a3ee 5y ago
I don't get what Dorsey's saying there. Only geeky mostly male hobbyists used IRC and usenet.
- mattlondon 5y ago
  I think his point was that "the old days" were decentralised (e.g email, IRC networks, sites), but today lots of people use centralised Twitter/Facebook/YouTube/Discord instead.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    Yeah, he's just trying to sell his new de-centralized web 3 activities. Creating a public record for that no doubt.
- jdrc 5y ago
  you make it sound like women were using something else?
- tootie 5y ago
  I have come to believe that Dorsey is very much a non-visionary. He doesn't understand why his own products are successful. Twitter is successful in 2022 for reasons that seem completely separate from what was ever intended. Like many successful entrepreneurs, he is vastly undervaluing how lucky he got. Twitter is neither micro-blogging nor a social network. It's a low-touch, self-service PR platform and it's wildly successful at it. That is completely orthogonal to what usenet was (and is) for. If there's a modern replacement for that niche, it's reddit.
- Longlius 5y ago
  There were a lot of women on IRC back in the day and it wasn't just hobbyists. Almost every web forum had an associated IRC channel and forum users would congregate there. Depending on what the forum was about, you'd often see more women than men.
QuikAccount 5y ago
I wonder do people who work for Twitter, Facebook, etc ever have thoughts about what they actually doing. Do they have the "are we the baddies" moment in their head? Do people who make Facebooks shadow profiles or insert tracking into every orifice of the internet think they are "the good guys?" Or do they just tell themselves good guys don't exist and they are just doing what everyone is doing?
- xyst 5y ago
  When you are paid $500K in total compensation (and a majority of it paid in how well the stock is performing), most worker drones will just not care. Golden handcuffs will blind you to the atrocities you are building. Or maybe the company has fully siloed off the teams. Maybe the worker drone doesn't know his/her project is actually being used to create these monsters. Either way, I have been resigned to not work for F(M)ANG companies. The engineering is beautiful, but the use of their work by the business is not.
- jjj123 5y ago
  I recently had a long conversation with someone who works at FB, someone asked them “what’s the morale like there right now, do people feel bad for working there at all?” And his answer was “yeah morale’s pretty low right now because the stock price tanked recently but other than that things are good.” It made me realize that some people truly do not think critically about the impact of their work. I think Facebook inadvertently selects for those kinds of people (or at least filters out people on the other end of the spectrum).
  - fsociety 5y ago
    You’re taking a sample size of one and using it to stereotype or generalize a large group of people working for a company. Many do care, and dedicate our time into making FAANG systems respect user’s privacy and improving security. There are internal discussions into ethical/moral consequences of decisions. Large organizations dedicated towards privacy, security, and integrity are given power to ensure the company operates ethically. It’s not perfect but it’s a hell of a lot more than most do. I hate this moralization of companies btw. Companies are not good or bad, but they are capable of causing harm or good. Instead I see it often used because person X decides that they hate company Y, so in their mind they label the company as “evil” or “bad”. But of course they ignore harmful behaviors that their own company are making. I’ve heard it all from folks in industry. Customer data leaking into Slack channels, data security being non-existent, no audit trails available in investigations, implementing only SMS MFA because it’s quicker and let’s them focus on more “impactful” projects. Ignoring verified accounts being sold on marketplaces. Making decisions which ultimately make the company a juicy target for attackers, without a discussion of trade-offs. Promoting culture which prioritize the company’s goals over the safety of users. Taking the “well that will never happen here” stance because their employees have “ethics” compared to those dirty FAANG employees. Promoting messaging platforms to children without proper safety protocols in place. Treating decentralization as the thing to fix all things, when historically the internet has been responsible for amazingly disgusting things long before the days of social media. The list goes on and on and on and on. I try to write about this on HN to combat the popular narrative but I’m slowly thinking that this isn’t the place to do it. But alas here is another one.
skilled 5y ago
As someone who looks back fondly back on the days of IRC, things have just gotten way out of hand. Everything is about that new product, that new platform, that new framework. People don’t care how it really works or who are the people behind it. People just want money and ultimately want to forget their problems through it. Then again, I was very much into mischief and that’s how I grew up. Social media is low-level stuff that bores the hell out of me because it serves no tangible purpose no matter how hard you try. Those days had meaning to them because of many factors, but mostly because everything felt new, fresh, and not filtered through hundreds of opinions or social norms.
Raed667 5y ago
Jack wants you to buy into his blockchain/crypto/decentralized narrative; where he stands to make even more money due to early mover advantage.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  This and transhumanist muskian future. I think he's having a slight depression / mild megalomaniac compensation episode.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    It's hard to avoid when the world rewards you so much for so little.
- rvz 5y ago
  Seems to have fooled almost everyone about building Twitter and now it is a so-called 'addictive' digital drugs platform for venting your outrage on to one another. Now since he left, he is doing the same thing but for crypto. The grift continues.
- deleted 5y ago
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MrMan 5y ago
he is just band-wagoning on this stupid decentralization fad. crocodile tears.
thenerdhead 5y ago
To be fair a decade ago only 30% of the world was online. Now that number is closer to 65%. Back in 2012 was the first moment they decided to censor on a country by country basis. Fast forward ten years and it’s on a person by person basis. Laws and regulation corrupted Twitter with enough time, not the invention itself. At its best, social media puts a mirror to humanity and reveals the full complexity of the world. It shines a light on the dark aspects of human nature. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/a/2012/tweets-still-must-flow https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/a/2012/tweets-still-must-flow
lvl102 5y ago
Jack doesn’t strike me as a person who participated in the early stages of the internet AT ALL. Largely because we used our ACTUAL NAMES back then.
- sammalloy 5y ago
  Not sure what you mean. He was born in 1976. He was 30 when he started Twitter in 2006.
  - riffic 5y ago
    2006 was not an early stage of the Internet.
    - sammalloy 5y ago
      That’s what you took away from my comment? Eternal September was in 1993, which means Jack was 17. He was around.
- jdrc 5y ago
  you mean we didn't
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I never used my real name on anything in the early days of the web, IRC, Usenet, or anything else. I've always worked to keep my online identity fine-grained and siloed wherever I could reasonably do so.
  - lvl102 5y ago
    Old school days? When it was literally academics, researchers and those of us lucky enough to live near research centers? Ok.
mkl95 5y ago
Twitter had a relatively good signal to noise ratio until 2011 or so. It became the place where people go to freak out and spy on their coworkers somewhere between late 2011 and mid 2012. By the mid 2010s it was creepy.
- jdrc 5y ago
  maybe my use of twitter is wrong, but it's where i go to find interesting news, articles, breaking news and somewhat uncensored opinions. Most 'aggregators' are saturated with the most mindbogglingly boring groupthink. Twitter is like FM tuner, you search for the good stuff. I wish it will be replaced with some kind of RSS though, it s terrible that it's all held by a not-so-competent corporate
  - jsemrau 5y ago
    I use it heavily as a news aggregator for finclout. For that it's extremely useful. For human interaction, I think the interface is crap.
    - jdrc 5y ago
      the interface is crap in general. it's 2022 and just now the page randomly reloads as i was reading an interesting thread, i lost my position as it was 15 or so infinite scrolls down. How can it be in this day and age i can't scroll, sort, search a list of tiny telegraphic sentences and images. The aliens who are watching us must be shaking their heads in disbelief
MengerSponge 5y ago
Maybe he can channel those regrets into actually making things better by cracking down on white supremacists, even if it comes with some personal cost? https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-algorithm-crackdown-white-supremacy-gop-politicians-report-2019-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-algorithm-crackdown-... In short, Twitter has had the ability to algorithmically filter white supremacists for years, but they haven't enabled it because GOP politicians are white supremacists.
- listless 5y ago
  I understand your frustration, but my friend, this kind of rhetoric is neither true nor helpful in us solving real problems.
  - MengerSponge 5y ago
    It's not a charitable interpretation, but not true? I dunno. That BI article probably wouldn't still be up, or would have had a stern talking-to from Twitter's lawyers, if it were just not true. Twitter isn't the most egregious actor (looking at you, Meta, and you, YouTube team at Alphabet), but the rhetoric of "white supremacists should not be welcomed in the public discourse" is both true and helpful. It's an effective North Star. "In their moral justification, the argument of the lesser evil has played a prominent role. If you are confronted with two evils, the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether. Its weakness has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly that they chose evil." -Hannah Arendt
- kcplate 5y ago
  It’s remarkable to me that especially after the last few years that people actually think that Twitter acts in the GOP’s best interest.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    If you're not 100% onboard, you're a traitor working for the enemy.
gaws 5y ago
> the days of usenet, irc, the web...even email (w PGP)...were amazing. usenet, irc, email with PGP... these still exist, and many people still use them.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  usenet is awful unless you're just trading binaries or something. IRC still has some good niches, nobody uses PGP with email these days, except maybe in the most extreme cases.
  - gaws 5y ago
    > usenet is awful unless you're just trading binaries or something. Using proper indexers and *arr software make using Usenet a breeze.
iamdamian 5y ago
What were we (technologists) thinking when we built these toxic social media platforms and algorithms? Tristan Harris gave a compelling talk a couple of years ago that dug into this question without assigning moral blame on us. [0] He's identified several principles, probably familiar to most of us and seemingly innocent, that he says have led us to where we are now: * Give users what they 'want' * Disrupt everything * Technology is neutral * Who are we to choose what our userbase does with our platform? * Value growth at all costs * Design our interfaces to convert users * Obsess over metrics Tristan is part of the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit that, in my opinion, deserves more of our attention. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQh2FQ7MZdA&t=22m51s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQh2FQ7MZdA&t=22m51s ; timestamped for the specific question, but the whole talk is worth a watch
- emilsedgh 5y ago
  > What were we (technologists) thinking when we built these toxic social media platforms and algorithms? If OKR A reaches B, we'd be valued at C, which would mean my stock option would be worth D. That's what everyone was, is, and will be thinking.
  - iamdamian 5y ago
    I think that's part of it. But surely if a team was handed an OKR to 'build ship control software that has a 50% chance of sinking a ship' or 'drive up teen mental health problems by 50%', few people would have gone along with it. I think the trick is that most people don't want to feel like the bad guy. They have to be able to convince themselves that what they're doing isn't harmful in order to avoid internal moral conflicts. The principles we hear about tech & neutrality give us enough leeway to feel okay about our actions even if the outcomes are toxic. (Which, to your point, lets us cash in when we hit our targets.)
    - exdsq 5y ago
      Also there’s a lot of hindsight here. What might look bad now is likely an emergent property of what at the time wasn’t bad at all (show you news sources people care about, etc). I can totally see people who hate what Facebook has become having no problems working on it a decade ago.
standardUser 5y ago
The entire idea of artificially limiting communicating with a character limit was destined to reduce civility and the ability to have reasoned, fact-based conversations.
- golergka 5y ago
  Not at all, there's plenty of very deep and researched conversions on twitter for those who seek them. However, a lot of people have already had conversions that were not that deep to begin with, and twitter just helped them get more succinct.
  - krapp 5y ago
    >there's plenty of very deep and researched conversions on twitter for those who seek them To be fair, that only happens because people work around Twitter's character limit by joining multiple tweets into "threads." It kind of works but it's also awkward and obviously contrary to the platform's ergonomics. Twitter wasn't designed or intended for deep conversations, though. It's meant for microblogging and posting pictures of your food.
- floss_silicate 5y ago
  The limit wasn’t artificial though, it was the number of characters you could send in a single SMS message (160 minus 20 reserved for meta data)
- canogat 5y ago
  It wasn't artificial. Twitter started as a way to broadcast an SMS text to followers. SMS length limit was 160 characters at the time. They reserved 20 characters for usernames resulting in the birth of the 140 limit.
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memish 5y ago
Did Jack not have control of Twitter? This and his other comments about censorship and decentralization suggests his hands were tied.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  He unlocked the gates of dark human behavior. The only "fix" is to not create Twitter. You can't manage your way around social herd behavior.
  - throwaway6532 5y ago
    Yeah. Humans are actually mildly terrible creatures and when you scale humanity it becomes simply awful.
im_down_w_otp 5y ago
Hmmm. Well. From what I understand he's now all-in on the crypto-currency craze. So, either his regrets have nothing in-particular to do with how simultaneously inane and toxic Twitter is for society, or he's very bad at actually recognizing his preternatural bias toward simultaneously inane and toxic "innovations", so can't recognize that his current passion is just as bad as his former passion. Though I'm not entirely sure it matters much which one of those is the case here. The difference between cynical exploitation and illconceived idealism isn't much when assessing the results.
- lvl102 5y ago
  He’s not all-in on crypto. He’s only all-in on bitcoin.
  - tails4e 5y ago
    Isn't that worse. Bitcoin is a huge energy hog.
    - exdsq 5y ago
      Up for interpretation. You’re very right environmentally. From a crypto perspective you could see a lot of it as fluffy marketing and rug pulls, while Bitcoin is a little more stable and ‘mature’
      - emteycz 5y ago
        Energy and environment are very distinct. Yes, BTC uses a lot of energy - but it's also helping the environment. For example, here they do heating of historical buildings (old castles etc - necessary for preservation of wall paintings and other artefacts) with BTC mining. That's good for environment because without the additional funds they would have to burn coal. There are renewable energy projects that are economical only thanks to Bitcoin, for example a nearby solar park. Not every place has year round sunshine, so you must overbuild significantly - but that costs a lot of money and also destabilizes the electrical grid when there's too much sunshine in the summer. Solution is simple - use the excess energy for mining, fund half the park with revenue from it. The same is done with wind energy.
jsemrau 5y ago
Crypto wallets are actually an effective way to manage identity. 1. Easy to setup on various tech helping unbanked as well. 2. To use it for payouts / fiat KYC and AML needs to be performed. 3. Tied to a person similar to a phone / email but not to a specific device.
- deleted 5y ago
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- mot0rola 5y ago
  How does recovery work though? Without delegating to multiple other people or a centralized service?
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    What's wrong with delegating to multiple (unknown-to-each-other) people you trust? They wouldn't all have to be reliable, as you could require N-of-M shares to unlock the full key.
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  Perhaps I’m unfamiliar with this definition of easy. I think the general consensus is that doing a good job of setting up a crypto wallet is much harder than doing a good job setting up a Twitter/Facebook/gmail account.
  - jsemrau 5y ago
    Downloading Guarda or Trustwallet is not that complicated.
basisword 5y ago
Easy to say when you've already made hundreds of millions, if not billions, from Twitter. Give it all to charity and start again building something you believe is ethical and I'll believe this is more than just a personal branding exercise.
- jorgesborges 5y ago
  Why does he need to give his money away before building something "ethical"? He did build Square, which was inspired by a neighbor in his hometown who had difficulty selling artwork. At least in my neck of the woods Square is everywhere and helps small business owners make a living.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - specialist 5y ago
    Penance. There is no forgiveness without sufficient contrition.
    - shanusmagnus 5y ago
      Proof of work :)
    - auslegung 5y ago
      > There is no forgiveness without sufficient contrition. Why? Says who? If I may assume you’re Catholic based on this, can you show me where in Catholic teaching we (non inclusive “we” as I’m not Catholic) are to hold outsiders to the same standard as fellow Catholics? If you’re not Catholic, then by what right do you, or does anyone, withhold forgiveness? Forgiveness, in the sense from your quote, can only be given or withheld by a higher authority. Who is the higher authority withholding or giving forgiveness to Jack Dorsey here? And what do you know about this higher authority’s intent to give or withhold forgiveness? Forgiveness, in the interpersonal sense, is not for the offender but for the offended, and withholding forgiveness in this interpersonal sense is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. In other words, withholding forgiveness is utterly absurd. (I do not say it’s easy to forgive, just that refusing is absurd.)
whiddershins 5y ago
He doesn’t have regrets about building Twitter. It’s how the rest of it played out.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  It's not like the same things couldn't happen on a de-centralized platform, not sure what he's getting at honestly. If you give people a public platform viewable by the whole internet it was going to happen. People are people.
productceo 5y ago
Must feel crushing for Twitter employees. I am amazed Jack Dorsey is arrogant enough to "regret" the enterprise. He must be under a delusion that "he" built Twitter. He's completely ignoring the fact that "his" enterprise was paid for with money, time, and skills of other people. I feel sorry for anyone who trusted him and gave him their time and skills, for the years of their life, which they invested in him and now they can never get back, have been wasted on creating merely a regrettable impact.
- stale2002 5y ago
  So what if some Twitter employees feel bad? I feel like you are ignoring the content of the argument here's which is about the drawbacks of a centralized web, and deflecting by talking about people's feelings. There are absolutely drawbacks to a centralized web. And we can talk about those drawbacks without worrying about if peoples feelings get hurt.
  - productceo 5y ago
    Words of a leader, or a symbolic representative in this case since Jack Dorsey has left Twitter, weighs more heavily than words of other people. You don't have to convince me to see the way you do, since I have no interest in blocking your discussion for merits and demerits of decentralized web. I also don't intend to convince anyone to see the way I do. This is just a reaction and a note for myself to never fail my people this way.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      This is framing the act of lying or concealment in order to protect ones own brand/image as a favor to those being lied to, who would obviously be crushed if dear leader turned out to be imperfect.
      - productceo 5y ago
        I believe your comment is a straw man argument. I did not ask Jack Dorsey or any other leaders to lie. The idea of 'promoting deceptive behaviors' is a concept that you introduced in this conversation, not me. Let me know if I misunderstood.
dan-robertson 5y ago
I hate the current title on this submission. The title is currently ‘Jack Dorsey has regrets about building Twitter’ and many comments are about how terrible Twitter is, but if you read the linked tweet I think a better summary is ‘Jack Dorsey thinks centralising discovery and identity is bad’ which does relate to Twitter but mostly feels like a reasonably expected statement from someone who is into bitcoin/crypto and likes the idea of decentralisation. So it doesn’t seem so interesting to me. Also he said pgp was good so maybe the whole post should be discounted as bogus...
cercatrova 5y ago
Did he even build Twitter? I thought it was mainly Ev Williams who was then pushed out.
- deleted 5y ago
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monksy 5y ago
Let's not forget what else Twitter burried: Blogs. There was a really good opportunity to create communities and really bring on unified connections between blogs. But big money really wanted to centralize it and monitize it.
travisgriggs 5y ago
IMO, the problem is not centralization. There were a few centralized/cooperative entities in the 80s/90s. Much of the backbone of the formative internet was funded and supported by universities and other government organizations that largely subsidized the operation of the internet. What changed/evolved was the profit motive to operate and control the internet. I think mastodon and the other reimplement-just-not-centralized projects struggle because they don’t have a low/non profit central patron. But no one really does software platform as a public service much anymore. Even something like GitHub, which starts out feeling that way, gets bought, and then starts to drift towards profit feedback motives.
- deleted 5y ago
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Gatsky 5y ago
Translation: back when it was just nerds on the internet things were better. I mean this is largely true but irrelevant nostalgia now.
specialist 5y ago
Square uses AI to detect, mitigate inauthentic activity. Twitter uses AI to boost inauthentic activity. Perhaps if Twitter had adopted Square's strategy from the start, its current market cap would be more comparable.
seadan83 5y ago
IMO the real evil of Twitter is that it went mainstream and is flawed. Flawed notably in the sense that volume defeats truth and discourse. 100k tweets is greater than the truth, meanwhile the 100k tweets is cheap and can be automated. Basically, Twitter makes astroturfing easy, and it makes it easy to be loud. After having gone mainstream, it is exploited through these flaws. So twitter helped to drown out these older communication channels, and replaced it with a field of very loud astroturf. To this extent I think Jack is correct regarding the centralization, but rose colored glasses on how twitter bots and good ol internet trolling have ruined discourse. (Trolling in the sense of asymmetric information warfare. I win when I can put out more falsehoods or misleading statements a magnitude faster than you can to refute them. While giving equal voice to all is noble, that is not twitter, and not really the internet anymore for some time now.. instead of the truth being found and debated, it is instead now drowned)
kornhole 5y ago
Jack has been tweeting much about self-hosting and decentralized solutions. Silicon valley has been struggling to figure how to capitalize on the trend post surveillance capitalism. W3 combined with crypocurrency seems to be their most hopeful, but major headwinds exist.
incomingpain 5y ago
He sat in a Joe Rogan podcast twice. Tim Pool told him exactly what he needed to do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZCBRHOg3PQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZCBRHOg3PQ In the last 3 years, what exactly did he do? Nothing. The situation got significant worse. Worse yet, because of their size they are 'too big to fail' and so they flagrantly allowed to break the law and violate free speech? Section 230 liability protections limits their ability to censor. Twitter is certainly in violation of Section 230. They simply need to stop doing this. That's it. Fire any twitter employee who isn't a free speech absolutist. Eventually Twitter will hit the wrong topic to censor and they will collapse so rapidly just like digg and how many others. I am very surprised it hasn't happened to date. Hunter Biden's laptop is real now? Censored on Twitter because it's 'hacked' or illegitimate or whatever. How many Trudeau Tyranny trends have been censored for no valid reason. We are counting. Meanwhile, the givesendgo hacked information of freedom protest donors was not only allowed... it was bumped up into trending. CBC covered it widely. Government then used hacked data to seize people's bank accounts. I dont see parler/mastodon/gab as true alternative to twitter yet. Twitter can fix themselves. They can move into compliance with Section 230. They can return free speech to their platform. If someone comes along to hostile takeover twitter and makes this change... they are going to be worth a trillion $.
heurisko 5y ago
In the 90s, there was more of a technical barrier to publishing things on the web. Today, there is no technical barrier to publishing things on the web, which has been facilitated in part by corporations like Twitter. I think the second is a lot more what Tim Berners-Lee envisioned, as the "read-write" web [1]. However I also think much of the second is awful. [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4132752.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4132752.stm
fleddr 5y ago
Regarding the discovery problem... I've been on the internet since the 90s, and centralization was inevitable from the start and visible from the early days. Independent bloggers started blog rolls where they link to other bloggers. And soon you could find this copycat behavior where everybody linked to the same "top" bloggers, establishing hierarchy. All traffic to a handful, the rest gets nothing. In absence of search engines, we had portals with links. But the real estate is limited, so again hierarchy is established. All traffic to the head, none to the tail. Then we "democratized" it with things like Digg.com, but not really. A handful of people (at one point in fact only one user) decides what gets on the homepage. Now things are far worse even with influencers snowballing into power and algorithms promoting what plays on our emotions. You'll see this pattern everywhere you go.

226 points by _dh54 5y ago

jdrc 5y ago

Email is still there, still decentralized in principle (which matters). Why not build identity on top of it, extend the protocol. And while you re at it, add notifications, which are a major reason why people use phones. Not professional enough for "corporates"? who cares

bklaasen 5y ago
Have you explored Delta Chat? https://delta.chat/en/ https://delta.chat/en/
- jdrc 5y ago
  no but yea, something like that
jokethrowaway 5y ago
Email is less and less decentralised. Unless you send email as a big provider, you'll risk being blocked.
- jdrc 5y ago
  they block it because they can. if more and more (important) people hosted their own mail, blockers wouldnt block so easily. Email is still in principle decentralized
Vladimof 5y ago
What I don't like about email is that it is required to create accounts almost everywhere... Reddit and HN are two exceptions. And now Google requires a phone number to create an email? I know that there are services like https://www.gmailnator.com https://www.gmailnator.com and https://www.receivesms.org/us-numbers/us/ https://www.receivesms.org/us-numbers/us/, but it doesn't always work.
- majewsky 5y ago
  There exist mail providers other than Gmail (allegedly).
  - Vladimof 5y ago
    You can also host your own, maybe. I just don't like the way all major providers are heading.
    - everforward 5y ago
      This is a common refrain when discussing email, but modern, useful email has an exceptionally high maintenance overhead, primarily due to anti-spam features. Running a basic email server is relatively easy. Running a mail server with good deliverability guarantees is very hard. You can end up blacklisted just because someone in the same IP block as you is sending spam. Your only solution will be to change IPs repeatedly until you get one with a good reputation, up until someone starts spamming again. You can be blacklisted because your domain or IP simply don't have enough historical data to determine whether it's likely spam. Often there won't be a clear answer to why you're blacklisted. If Gmail sends your stuff to the spam box, good luck getting Google to tell you why. It's not insurmountable; you can do it, but be prepared to invest an absurd amount of time setting it up and trying to set up automated delivery tests to make sure you haven't been blacklisted since you set it up.
      - Vladimof 5y ago
        > Often there won't be a clear answer to why you're blacklisted. If Gmail sends your stuff to the spam box, good luck getting Google to tell you why. Yeah, they make it hard to get an email address semi-anonymously and then when you create your own server, they block you for "spam"
- riffic 5y ago
  My community college created my Gmail account for me and they needed a lot more information than just a phone number to enroll up. What I'm trying to say here is that we can get email or other identities other than the ones we make on our own. Perhaps we should be doing this identity-tying more often? Many people get email addresses from their employer and aren't expected to move those addresses around when they change jobs.
tester756 5y ago
Email has terrible withdrawal support, or I'm not aware of anything that handles it. For example I had address@email-hosting.com and after a few years I stopped using it after some years I tried to sign into my account and realized that it doesn't exist and to my shock I was able to create account with that address again! Email in my opinion lacks of "broadcast account being closed" option or something like that
- jdrc 5y ago
  domains do that too It's good. we dont need perfect systems, neither should an email be tied to our real existence or our whole existence . "Real name" identities was a mistake. Semi-anonymous, expendable identity is better

zeruch 4y ago

What he regrets is being outmaneuvered by other, more apex jackwagons in the industry. He's a schmuck.

pmoriarty 5y ago

Another source, which doesn't require javascript to view: https://nitter.net/jack/status/1510314535671922689 https://nitter.net/jack/status/1510314535671922689

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

alecbz 5y ago

I don’t know if he’s saying he regrets it on net, just that he regrets the extent to which it’s contributed to this centralization.

simonswords82 5y ago

He could do us all a favour and shut Twitter down if he feels that strongly about it. There probably is not a more polarising platform out there.

lawtalkinghuman 5y ago
One might think the employees, investors and users might have some issues with "just shut the entire thing down".
- rvz 5y ago
  To be fair, they actually had the guts to shut down Vine. They know that they can do the same for Twitter and sunset it. Perhaps it's for the best to save everyone from themselves.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    They shut down vine for business reasons not because of any soul searching. Business is business. 99.9% of companies will NEVER shut down over ethical reasons.
paulpauper 5y ago
this is not 2007
- simonswords82 5y ago
  I don't understand the point you are attempting to make?
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    he doesn't control twitter anymore and when he was CEO it's not like he could have shut it down given that there was a board of directors and shareholders that would have opposed it. HIs only recourse would have been to resign.

paulpauper 5y ago

If you regret it, give back the money you earned from it, presumably the stock

ARandomerDude 5y ago
Give it back to the company he's complaining about? That would make the problem worse, not better.
- ergocoder 5y ago
  Oh no. We are stuck. Better keep the billions then. There is absolutely no other way.
  - ARandomerDude 5y ago
    That's not at all what I said. I said giving it to Twitter is not the solution.
  - SkinTaco 5y ago
    Hahahahaha
traskjd 5y ago
Who to?
- paulpauper 5y ago
  to charity. Chuck Feeney , the founder of Duty Free, who did just that.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  There are plenty of non-profits who fight against this "new world" he helped create. The EFF is just one example of many.
  - moralestapia 5y ago

Shared404 5y ago

If only twitter were just a Mastodon instance. There's a way to undo the harm he's already done, but I don't know if he can make that sort of change at this point.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
smoldesu 5y ago
Twitter tried committing to some decentralization thing with their "BlueSky" project, but it never went anywhere. I think the best solution would have been giving Twitter a read-only RSS interface alongside an ActivityPub implementation, but I'm guessing that solution didn't appeal to investors all that much.
- pfraze 5y ago
  It actually just got funded as its own org this year [1]. It was a community until that happened. 1. https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/2-28-2022-how-it-started https://blueskyweb.xyz/blog/2-28-2022-how-it-started
  - riffic 5y ago
    lol, they may have just hired you on, Paul, but the project as a whole is vaporware. It deserves a healthy amount of criticism and skepticism. A community is a generous thing to call a bunch of Discord channels. Twitter Inc could have had a seat at the table with the W3C federated social web peeps but decided to ignore everything and do its own thing. In 2008, Evan Prodromou himself gave us something the cool kids will use anyway (the Fediverse), despite what gets cooked up at bs web <dot> xyz. EDIT: Bluesky is an embodiment of anti-competitive Not-Invented-Here Syndrome. It should be shunned. If you want to develop open protocols, the proper channels would be to play within the friendly confines of a group like the W3C. If you want to know how I really feel, I feel like Bluesky is destined to fail due to its untrustworthy origins (no offense to the people involved, Golda is an amazing person and has been doing her best so far).

mehrdada 5y ago

Sensationalist title, not what he said at all.

rdxm 5y ago

[dead]

giraffe_lady 5y ago

Acknowledgement isn't repentance, or even an apology. If he thinks his actions caused harm, this isn't even half of a first step towards rectifying it.

mulmen 5y ago

It’s amazing how this guy only grows a conscience when he’s powerless to do anything about it.

CoastalCoder 5y ago
You may be right, but I doubt he's the only one with that failing.
tmp_anon_22 5y ago
*when he has stopped being financially reliant on it. Facebook, Twitter, and Google, all had alternative paths where they make significantly less money but are much more of a positive influence on the internet and society at large. They chose money - and here we are. I struggle to think of a single organization (even Mozilla) in their class of company that did NOT choose the money. And it makes me think the financial structure of all these companies forces them from conception to use the money path.
- prepend 5y ago
  It’s arguable whether apple would have made more money by reducing the price on their devices and maximizing ad revenue from customer behavior (ie android). I kind of feel like they made their decisions based on Jobs’ hardware profit margins strategy that worked well before service or data profit margins. Also, although not a company I feel like Apache has turned down multiple opportunities to sell out and kept to their principles.
Nextgrid 5y ago
He's not truly powerless though. He's got plenty of money that can be put to use by lobbying for anti-trust, pro-privacy legislation and stronger regulations on social media companies.
- deleted 5y ago
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arcticbull 5y ago

Does he though? Jack likely regrets losing control of twitter about 3 separate times. This feels like the outrage of the moment, one he can capitalize on to get more folks also regretting Jack losing control of twitter about 3 separate times. At most this has a feeling of rose colored glasses. Man the past sure was better except for, you know, everything about it.

Eric_WVGG 5y ago
hm, I disagree with that. I think all signs point to Jack being a true techno-utopian of the old 90's Wired magazine era. If that’s true, then it makes perfect sense that his tech-hippy leanings would be incompatible with turning Twitter into the FAANG-grade blockbuster that his investors were banking on. And crypto of course slots neatly into that same Wired/Jaron-Lanier/early-Burning-Man sect. I think this is a case of the simplest explanation being the likeliest: He's telling the truth, and he's a huge dork.

evocatus 5y ago

More apologies to dress one's self up with morality and a tinge of nostalgia, with nothing substantive actually being done about it. Typical white liberal behavior. Burn in hell.

sydthrowaway 5y ago
What is the alternative? Suggest solutions.
- tonguez 5y ago
  help build an alternative that isn’t designed solely around accomplishing neoconservative objectives like the dissemination and amplification war propaganda, and general subversion of democracy by inciting racial division, removal of democratically elected leaders, etc
- altdataseller 5y ago
  Why? Jack is the one that is publicly regretting it. He’s the one that needs to propose solutions. And if he is working on a solution, then tell us that solution or what he’s planning to do
- rakoo 5y ago
  Implement ActivityPub inside twitter to make it Just Another Fediverse Instance. Jack has (had?) the authority to do it, unlike the GP who can't fix the problem individually from their laptop
- evocatus 5y ago
  For him to stop exploiting his privilege as a rich white man to farm social credit and shut up.
- slowmovintarget 5y ago
  Elon, for all his bluster, built an industry with the goal of getting humanity to Mars. Recently, he's sold off his mansions as being unneeded excess. There's no end to charitable work that can use the funds. He could lobby for affordable housing in San Fran, fighting all those "nimby" interests. He could lobby against the military industrial complex, against the revolving door between Wall Street and the White House, for clean energy, for non-GMO natural foods (and against Bill Gates's soylent projects). You know, stuff like that. He'd only need to pick one to make a difference. Or maybe... Lobby for the destruction of the engagement algorithms. Granted, this would make a great many powerful people very angry, and they'd turn on him like sharks on a wounded school-mate, but it would be more honorable than complaining after the massive payday.

dataangel 5y ago

I think the nostalgia is really rooted in the fact that there was a stronger filter for who was on the Internet back then. You had to be willing to put in more time, you had to understand more things, it was harder to use. You were much more likely to be a tech enthusiast or an academic if you were on the Internet even up until ~2008. I feel like smartphones are the real September that never ended, and social media just lowered the barrier further. People were blogging before that but even setting up a blog was harder than writing a Facebook post or a tweet. There are upsides to the new world though. That filter wasn't exclusively good. Computers were a lot more expensive. Poorer communities lacked access. People without tech savvy are often still pretty smart and have good points to make.

Nextgrid 5y ago
I don't fully agree. One thing is having a built-in filter, but the other thing is encouraging harmful behavior. Not only has the filter now been removed, but the new entrants have been encouraged (through algorithms which promote divisive content) to produce and consume harmful content because it increases "engagement". There was a period of time where social media was just starting out where the filter has essentially been removed (anyone can easily join and start producing & consuming content) but harmful content wasn't yet encouraged. Social media was about keeping up with your friends' content, and while I'm sure harmful & divisive content was present, you had to explicitly seek it out (by liking/following the right accounts). Nowadays all social media uses algorithms that promote content that will yield the maximum amount of "engagement" on your part so you increase the time spend on the platform and the amount of ads watched.
- dijonman2 5y ago
  The definition of harmful content is a big sticking point with me. Engaging in civil discourse on a hot topic typically ends with one side being accused of something heinous. That’s not harmful. That’s blatant censorship.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Indeed there's no clear answer as to what content is "harmful", which is why I'm not advocating for censorship but merely to let the user be in control of what they see. Currently, the algorithm will prioritize content that produces the most "engagement", including even content that you otherwise have no link with and don't follow the user who posted it. Divisive, outrageous, hateful or blatantly fake content will typically generate tremendous amounts of engagement (as people start arguing over it) as opposed to mundane content such as updates from your friends. There's also no way to have "civil discourse" when the algorithm prioritizes the hottest takes as opposed to more reasonable arguments.

mise_en_place 5y ago

It seems like a sour grapes moment, he would never have said that while still at the helm of Twitter. I still have more respect for Mark Zuckerberg, who in practice did more for freedom of speech in comparison, though he too capitulated to the whims of a vocal minority. That is the purpose of freedom of speech, to prevent the tyranny of the majority’s opinions from receiving outsize importance and visibility

doctor_eval 5y ago
Honestly, looking at political discourse today, I could only agree that the supposed “tyranny of the majority” has been replaced by a tyranny of the minority. Freedom of speech doesn’t imply the freedom to be heard. It just means you shouldn’t go to jail for saying something stupid. But now we have a million stupid people demanding the right to scream at us. And they are using that right for their own material betterment, at the expense of everything, most especially the truth.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

micromacrofoot 5y ago

regretting it all the way to the bank

paxys 5y ago

The internet used to be low-level infrastructure, now it is a collective global consciousness. The "old days" weren't better or worse, they were just completely different. Decentralization simply does not serve the reason that most people go online for today.

rubyist5eva 5y ago

After he made his millions and exited. Sorry can’t take this guy seriously. What a wank

da39a3ee 5y ago

I don't get what Dorsey's saying there. Only geeky mostly male hobbyists used IRC and usenet.

mattlondon 5y ago
I think his point was that "the old days" were decentralised (e.g email, IRC networks, sites), but today lots of people use centralised Twitter/Facebook/YouTube/Discord instead.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Yeah, he's just trying to sell his new de-centralized web 3 activities. Creating a public record for that no doubt.
jdrc 5y ago
you make it sound like women were using something else?
tootie 5y ago
I have come to believe that Dorsey is very much a non-visionary. He doesn't understand why his own products are successful. Twitter is successful in 2022 for reasons that seem completely separate from what was ever intended. Like many successful entrepreneurs, he is vastly undervaluing how lucky he got. Twitter is neither micro-blogging nor a social network. It's a low-touch, self-service PR platform and it's wildly successful at it. That is completely orthogonal to what usenet was (and is) for. If there's a modern replacement for that niche, it's reddit.
Longlius 5y ago
There were a lot of women on IRC back in the day and it wasn't just hobbyists. Almost every web forum had an associated IRC channel and forum users would congregate there. Depending on what the forum was about, you'd often see more women than men.

QuikAccount 5y ago

I wonder do people who work for Twitter, Facebook, etc ever have thoughts about what they actually doing. Do they have the "are we the baddies" moment in their head? Do people who make Facebooks shadow profiles or insert tracking into every orifice of the internet think they are "the good guys?" Or do they just tell themselves good guys don't exist and they are just doing what everyone is doing?

xyst 5y ago
When you are paid $500K in total compensation (and a majority of it paid in how well the stock is performing), most worker drones will just not care. Golden handcuffs will blind you to the atrocities you are building. Or maybe the company has fully siloed off the teams. Maybe the worker drone doesn't know his/her project is actually being used to create these monsters. Either way, I have been resigned to not work for F(M)ANG companies. The engineering is beautiful, but the use of their work by the business is not.
jjj123 5y ago
I recently had a long conversation with someone who works at FB, someone asked them “what’s the morale like there right now, do people feel bad for working there at all?” And his answer was “yeah morale’s pretty low right now because the stock price tanked recently but other than that things are good.” It made me realize that some people truly do not think critically about the impact of their work. I think Facebook inadvertently selects for those kinds of people (or at least filters out people on the other end of the spectrum).
- fsociety 5y ago
  You’re taking a sample size of one and using it to stereotype or generalize a large group of people working for a company. Many do care, and dedicate our time into making FAANG systems respect user’s privacy and improving security. There are internal discussions into ethical/moral consequences of decisions. Large organizations dedicated towards privacy, security, and integrity are given power to ensure the company operates ethically. It’s not perfect but it’s a hell of a lot more than most do. I hate this moralization of companies btw. Companies are not good or bad, but they are capable of causing harm or good. Instead I see it often used because person X decides that they hate company Y, so in their mind they label the company as “evil” or “bad”. But of course they ignore harmful behaviors that their own company are making. I’ve heard it all from folks in industry. Customer data leaking into Slack channels, data security being non-existent, no audit trails available in investigations, implementing only SMS MFA because it’s quicker and let’s them focus on more “impactful” projects. Ignoring verified accounts being sold on marketplaces. Making decisions which ultimately make the company a juicy target for attackers, without a discussion of trade-offs. Promoting culture which prioritize the company’s goals over the safety of users. Taking the “well that will never happen here” stance because their employees have “ethics” compared to those dirty FAANG employees. Promoting messaging platforms to children without proper safety protocols in place. Treating decentralization as the thing to fix all things, when historically the internet has been responsible for amazingly disgusting things long before the days of social media. The list goes on and on and on and on. I try to write about this on HN to combat the popular narrative but I’m slowly thinking that this isn’t the place to do it. But alas here is another one.

skilled 5y ago

As someone who looks back fondly back on the days of IRC, things have just gotten way out of hand. Everything is about that new product, that new platform, that new framework. People don’t care how it really works or who are the people behind it. People just want money and ultimately want to forget their problems through it. Then again, I was very much into mischief and that’s how I grew up. Social media is low-level stuff that bores the hell out of me because it serves no tangible purpose no matter how hard you try. Those days had meaning to them because of many factors, but mostly because everything felt new, fresh, and not filtered through hundreds of opinions or social norms.

Raed667 5y ago

Jack wants you to buy into his blockchain/crypto/decentralized narrative; where he stands to make even more money due to early mover advantage.

agumonkey 5y ago
This and transhumanist muskian future. I think he's having a slight depression / mild megalomaniac compensation episode.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  It's hard to avoid when the world rewards you so much for so little.
rvz 5y ago
Seems to have fooled almost everyone about building Twitter and now it is a so-called 'addictive' digital drugs platform for venting your outrage on to one another. Now since he left, he is doing the same thing but for crypto. The grift continues.
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MrMan 5y ago

he is just band-wagoning on this stupid decentralization fad. crocodile tears.

thenerdhead 5y ago

To be fair a decade ago only 30% of the world was online. Now that number is closer to 65%. Back in 2012 was the first moment they decided to censor on a country by country basis. Fast forward ten years and it’s on a person by person basis. Laws and regulation corrupted Twitter with enough time, not the invention itself. At its best, social media puts a mirror to humanity and reveals the full complexity of the world. It shines a light on the dark aspects of human nature. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/a/2012/tweets-still-must-flow https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/a/2012/tweets-still-must-flow

lvl102 5y ago

Jack doesn’t strike me as a person who participated in the early stages of the internet AT ALL. Largely because we used our ACTUAL NAMES back then.

sammalloy 5y ago
Not sure what you mean. He was born in 1976. He was 30 when he started Twitter in 2006.
- riffic 5y ago
  2006 was not an early stage of the Internet.
  - sammalloy 5y ago
    That’s what you took away from my comment? Eternal September was in 1993, which means Jack was 17. He was around.
jdrc 5y ago
you mean we didn't
stjohnswarts 5y ago
I never used my real name on anything in the early days of the web, IRC, Usenet, or anything else. I've always worked to keep my online identity fine-grained and siloed wherever I could reasonably do so.
- lvl102 5y ago
  Old school days? When it was literally academics, researchers and those of us lucky enough to live near research centers? Ok.

mkl95 5y ago

Twitter had a relatively good signal to noise ratio until 2011 or so. It became the place where people go to freak out and spy on their coworkers somewhere between late 2011 and mid 2012. By the mid 2010s it was creepy.

jdrc 5y ago
maybe my use of twitter is wrong, but it's where i go to find interesting news, articles, breaking news and somewhat uncensored opinions. Most 'aggregators' are saturated with the most mindbogglingly boring groupthink. Twitter is like FM tuner, you search for the good stuff. I wish it will be replaced with some kind of RSS though, it s terrible that it's all held by a not-so-competent corporate
- jsemrau 5y ago
  I use it heavily as a news aggregator for finclout. For that it's extremely useful. For human interaction, I think the interface is crap.
  - jdrc 5y ago
    the interface is crap in general. it's 2022 and just now the page randomly reloads as i was reading an interesting thread, i lost my position as it was 15 or so infinite scrolls down. How can it be in this day and age i can't scroll, sort, search a list of tiny telegraphic sentences and images. The aliens who are watching us must be shaking their heads in disbelief

MengerSponge 5y ago

Maybe he can channel those regrets into actually making things better by cracking down on white supremacists, even if it comes with some personal cost? https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-algorithm-crackdown-white-supremacy-gop-politicians-report-2019-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-algorithm-crackdown-... In short, Twitter has had the ability to algorithmically filter white supremacists for years, but they haven't enabled it because GOP politicians are white supremacists.

listless 5y ago
I understand your frustration, but my friend, this kind of rhetoric is neither true nor helpful in us solving real problems.
- MengerSponge 5y ago
  It's not a charitable interpretation, but not true? I dunno. That BI article probably wouldn't still be up, or would have had a stern talking-to from Twitter's lawyers, if it were just not true. Twitter isn't the most egregious actor (looking at you, Meta, and you, YouTube team at Alphabet), but the rhetoric of "white supremacists should not be welcomed in the public discourse" is both true and helpful. It's an effective North Star. "In their moral justification, the argument of the lesser evil has played a prominent role. If you are confronted with two evils, the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether. Its weakness has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly that they chose evil." -Hannah Arendt
kcplate 5y ago
It’s remarkable to me that especially after the last few years that people actually think that Twitter acts in the GOP’s best interest.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  If you're not 100% onboard, you're a traitor working for the enemy.

gaws 5y ago

> the days of usenet, irc, the web...even email (w PGP)...were amazing. usenet, irc, email with PGP... these still exist, and many people still use them.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
usenet is awful unless you're just trading binaries or something. IRC still has some good niches, nobody uses PGP with email these days, except maybe in the most extreme cases.
- gaws 5y ago
  > usenet is awful unless you're just trading binaries or something. Using proper indexers and *arr software make using Usenet a breeze.

iamdamian 5y ago

What were we (technologists) thinking when we built these toxic social media platforms and algorithms? Tristan Harris gave a compelling talk a couple of years ago that dug into this question without assigning moral blame on us. [0] He's identified several principles, probably familiar to most of us and seemingly innocent, that he says have led us to where we are now: * Give users what they 'want' * Disrupt everything * Technology is neutral * Who are we to choose what our userbase does with our platform? * Value growth at all costs * Design our interfaces to convert users * Obsess over metrics Tristan is part of the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit that, in my opinion, deserves more of our attention. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQh2FQ7MZdA&t=22m51s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQh2FQ7MZdA&t=22m51s ; timestamped for the specific question, but the whole talk is worth a watch

emilsedgh 5y ago
> What were we (technologists) thinking when we built these toxic social media platforms and algorithms? If OKR A reaches B, we'd be valued at C, which would mean my stock option would be worth D. That's what everyone was, is, and will be thinking.
- iamdamian 5y ago
  I think that's part of it. But surely if a team was handed an OKR to 'build ship control software that has a 50% chance of sinking a ship' or 'drive up teen mental health problems by 50%', few people would have gone along with it. I think the trick is that most people don't want to feel like the bad guy. They have to be able to convince themselves that what they're doing isn't harmful in order to avoid internal moral conflicts. The principles we hear about tech & neutrality give us enough leeway to feel okay about our actions even if the outcomes are toxic. (Which, to your point, lets us cash in when we hit our targets.)
  - exdsq 5y ago
    Also there’s a lot of hindsight here. What might look bad now is likely an emergent property of what at the time wasn’t bad at all (show you news sources people care about, etc). I can totally see people who hate what Facebook has become having no problems working on it a decade ago.

standardUser 5y ago

The entire idea of artificially limiting communicating with a character limit was destined to reduce civility and the ability to have reasoned, fact-based conversations.

golergka 5y ago
Not at all, there's plenty of very deep and researched conversions on twitter for those who seek them. However, a lot of people have already had conversions that were not that deep to begin with, and twitter just helped them get more succinct.
- krapp 5y ago
  >there's plenty of very deep and researched conversions on twitter for those who seek them To be fair, that only happens because people work around Twitter's character limit by joining multiple tweets into "threads." It kind of works but it's also awkward and obviously contrary to the platform's ergonomics. Twitter wasn't designed or intended for deep conversations, though. It's meant for microblogging and posting pictures of your food.
floss_silicate 5y ago
The limit wasn’t artificial though, it was the number of characters you could send in a single SMS message (160 minus 20 reserved for meta data)
canogat 5y ago
It wasn't artificial. Twitter started as a way to broadcast an SMS text to followers. SMS length limit was 160 characters at the time. They reserved 20 characters for usernames resulting in the birth of the 140 limit.
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memish 5y ago

Did Jack not have control of Twitter? This and his other comments about censorship and decentralization suggests his hands were tied.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
He unlocked the gates of dark human behavior. The only "fix" is to not create Twitter. You can't manage your way around social herd behavior.
- throwaway6532 5y ago
  Yeah. Humans are actually mildly terrible creatures and when you scale humanity it becomes simply awful.

im_down_w_otp 5y ago

Hmmm. Well. From what I understand he's now all-in on the crypto-currency craze. So, either his regrets have nothing in-particular to do with how simultaneously inane and toxic Twitter is for society, or he's very bad at actually recognizing his preternatural bias toward simultaneously inane and toxic "innovations", so can't recognize that his current passion is just as bad as his former passion. Though I'm not entirely sure it matters much which one of those is the case here. The difference between cynical exploitation and illconceived idealism isn't much when assessing the results.

lvl102 5y ago
He’s not all-in on crypto. He’s only all-in on bitcoin.
- tails4e 5y ago
  Isn't that worse. Bitcoin is a huge energy hog.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    Up for interpretation. You’re very right environmentally. From a crypto perspective you could see a lot of it as fluffy marketing and rug pulls, while Bitcoin is a little more stable and ‘mature’
    - emteycz 5y ago
      Energy and environment are very distinct. Yes, BTC uses a lot of energy - but it's also helping the environment. For example, here they do heating of historical buildings (old castles etc - necessary for preservation of wall paintings and other artefacts) with BTC mining. That's good for environment because without the additional funds they would have to burn coal. There are renewable energy projects that are economical only thanks to Bitcoin, for example a nearby solar park. Not every place has year round sunshine, so you must overbuild significantly - but that costs a lot of money and also destabilizes the electrical grid when there's too much sunshine in the summer. Solution is simple - use the excess energy for mining, fund half the park with revenue from it. The same is done with wind energy.

jsemrau 5y ago

Crypto wallets are actually an effective way to manage identity. 1. Easy to setup on various tech helping unbanked as well. 2. To use it for payouts / fiat KYC and AML needs to be performed. 3. Tied to a person similar to a phone / email but not to a specific device.

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mot0rola 5y ago
How does recovery work though? Without delegating to multiple other people or a centralized service?
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  What's wrong with delegating to multiple (unknown-to-each-other) people you trust? They wouldn't all have to be reliable, as you could require N-of-M shares to unlock the full key.
dan-robertson 5y ago
Perhaps I’m unfamiliar with this definition of easy. I think the general consensus is that doing a good job of setting up a crypto wallet is much harder than doing a good job setting up a Twitter/Facebook/gmail account.
- jsemrau 5y ago
  Downloading Guarda or Trustwallet is not that complicated.

basisword 5y ago

Easy to say when you've already made hundreds of millions, if not billions, from Twitter. Give it all to charity and start again building something you believe is ethical and I'll believe this is more than just a personal branding exercise.

jorgesborges 5y ago
Why does he need to give his money away before building something "ethical"? He did build Square, which was inspired by a neighbor in his hometown who had difficulty selling artwork. At least in my neck of the woods Square is everywhere and helps small business owners make a living.
- deleted 5y ago
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- specialist 5y ago
  Penance. There is no forgiveness without sufficient contrition.
  - shanusmagnus 5y ago
    Proof of work :)
  - auslegung 5y ago
    > There is no forgiveness without sufficient contrition. Why? Says who? If I may assume you’re Catholic based on this, can you show me where in Catholic teaching we (non inclusive “we” as I’m not Catholic) are to hold outsiders to the same standard as fellow Catholics? If you’re not Catholic, then by what right do you, or does anyone, withhold forgiveness? Forgiveness, in the sense from your quote, can only be given or withheld by a higher authority. Who is the higher authority withholding or giving forgiveness to Jack Dorsey here? And what do you know about this higher authority’s intent to give or withhold forgiveness? Forgiveness, in the interpersonal sense, is not for the offender but for the offended, and withholding forgiveness in this interpersonal sense is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. In other words, withholding forgiveness is utterly absurd. (I do not say it’s easy to forgive, just that refusing is absurd.)

whiddershins 5y ago

He doesn’t have regrets about building Twitter. It’s how the rest of it played out.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
It's not like the same things couldn't happen on a de-centralized platform, not sure what he's getting at honestly. If you give people a public platform viewable by the whole internet it was going to happen. People are people.

productceo 5y ago

Must feel crushing for Twitter employees. I am amazed Jack Dorsey is arrogant enough to "regret" the enterprise. He must be under a delusion that "he" built Twitter. He's completely ignoring the fact that "his" enterprise was paid for with money, time, and skills of other people. I feel sorry for anyone who trusted him and gave him their time and skills, for the years of their life, which they invested in him and now they can never get back, have been wasted on creating merely a regrettable impact.

stale2002 5y ago
So what if some Twitter employees feel bad? I feel like you are ignoring the content of the argument here's which is about the drawbacks of a centralized web, and deflecting by talking about people's feelings. There are absolutely drawbacks to a centralized web. And we can talk about those drawbacks without worrying about if peoples feelings get hurt.
- productceo 5y ago
  Words of a leader, or a symbolic representative in this case since Jack Dorsey has left Twitter, weighs more heavily than words of other people. You don't have to convince me to see the way you do, since I have no interest in blocking your discussion for merits and demerits of decentralized web. I also don't intend to convince anyone to see the way I do. This is just a reaction and a note for myself to never fail my people this way.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    This is framing the act of lying or concealment in order to protect ones own brand/image as a favor to those being lied to, who would obviously be crushed if dear leader turned out to be imperfect.
    - productceo 5y ago
      I believe your comment is a straw man argument. I did not ask Jack Dorsey or any other leaders to lie. The idea of 'promoting deceptive behaviors' is a concept that you introduced in this conversation, not me. Let me know if I misunderstood.

dan-robertson 5y ago

I hate the current title on this submission. The title is currently ‘Jack Dorsey has regrets about building Twitter’ and many comments are about how terrible Twitter is, but if you read the linked tweet I think a better summary is ‘Jack Dorsey thinks centralising discovery and identity is bad’ which does relate to Twitter but mostly feels like a reasonably expected statement from someone who is into bitcoin/crypto and likes the idea of decentralisation. So it doesn’t seem so interesting to me. Also he said pgp was good so maybe the whole post should be discounted as bogus...

cercatrova 5y ago

Did he even build Twitter? I thought it was mainly Ev Williams who was then pushed out.

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monksy 5y ago

Let's not forget what else Twitter burried: Blogs. There was a really good opportunity to create communities and really bring on unified connections between blogs. But big money really wanted to centralize it and monitize it.

travisgriggs 5y ago

IMO, the problem is not centralization. There were a few centralized/cooperative entities in the 80s/90s. Much of the backbone of the formative internet was funded and supported by universities and other government organizations that largely subsidized the operation of the internet. What changed/evolved was the profit motive to operate and control the internet. I think mastodon and the other reimplement-just-not-centralized projects struggle because they don’t have a low/non profit central patron. But no one really does software platform as a public service much anymore. Even something like GitHub, which starts out feeling that way, gets bought, and then starts to drift towards profit feedback motives.

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Gatsky 5y ago

Translation: back when it was just nerds on the internet things were better. I mean this is largely true but irrelevant nostalgia now.

specialist 5y ago

Square uses AI to detect, mitigate inauthentic activity. Twitter uses AI to boost inauthentic activity. Perhaps if Twitter had adopted Square's strategy from the start, its current market cap would be more comparable.

seadan83 5y ago

IMO the real evil of Twitter is that it went mainstream and is flawed. Flawed notably in the sense that volume defeats truth and discourse. 100k tweets is greater than the truth, meanwhile the 100k tweets is cheap and can be automated. Basically, Twitter makes astroturfing easy, and it makes it easy to be loud. After having gone mainstream, it is exploited through these flaws. So twitter helped to drown out these older communication channels, and replaced it with a field of very loud astroturf. To this extent I think Jack is correct regarding the centralization, but rose colored glasses on how twitter bots and good ol internet trolling have ruined discourse. (Trolling in the sense of asymmetric information warfare. I win when I can put out more falsehoods or misleading statements a magnitude faster than you can to refute them. While giving equal voice to all is noble, that is not twitter, and not really the internet anymore for some time now.. instead of the truth being found and debated, it is instead now drowned)

kornhole 5y ago

Jack has been tweeting much about self-hosting and decentralized solutions. Silicon valley has been struggling to figure how to capitalize on the trend post surveillance capitalism. W3 combined with crypocurrency seems to be their most hopeful, but major headwinds exist.

incomingpain 5y ago

He sat in a Joe Rogan podcast twice. Tim Pool told him exactly what he needed to do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZCBRHOg3PQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZCBRHOg3PQ In the last 3 years, what exactly did he do? Nothing. The situation got significant worse. Worse yet, because of their size they are 'too big to fail' and so they flagrantly allowed to break the law and violate free speech? Section 230 liability protections limits their ability to censor. Twitter is certainly in violation of Section 230. They simply need to stop doing this. That's it. Fire any twitter employee who isn't a free speech absolutist. Eventually Twitter will hit the wrong topic to censor and they will collapse so rapidly just like digg and how many others. I am very surprised it hasn't happened to date. Hunter Biden's laptop is real now? Censored on Twitter because it's 'hacked' or illegitimate or whatever. How many Trudeau Tyranny trends have been censored for no valid reason. We are counting. Meanwhile, the givesendgo hacked information of freedom protest donors was not only allowed... it was bumped up into trending. CBC covered it widely. Government then used hacked data to seize people's bank accounts. I dont see parler/mastodon/gab as true alternative to twitter yet. Twitter can fix themselves. They can move into compliance with Section 230. They can return free speech to their platform. If someone comes along to hostile takeover twitter and makes this change... they are going to be worth a trillion $.

heurisko 5y ago

In the 90s, there was more of a technical barrier to publishing things on the web. Today, there is no technical barrier to publishing things on the web, which has been facilitated in part by corporations like Twitter. I think the second is a lot more what Tim Berners-Lee envisioned, as the "read-write" web [1]. However I also think much of the second is awful. [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4132752.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4132752.stm

fleddr 5y ago

Regarding the discovery problem... I've been on the internet since the 90s, and centralization was inevitable from the start and visible from the early days. Independent bloggers started blog rolls where they link to other bloggers. And soon you could find this copycat behavior where everybody linked to the same "top" bloggers, establishing hierarchy. All traffic to a handful, the rest gets nothing. In absence of search engines, we had portals with links. But the real estate is limited, so again hierarchy is established. All traffic to the head, none to the tail. Then we "democratized" it with things like Digg.com, but not really. A handful of people (at one point in fact only one user) decides what gets on the homepage. Now things are far worse even with influencers snowballing into power and algorithms promoting what plays on our emotions. You'll see this pattern everywhere you go.