30 ms·

Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

529 points by boulos 4y ago

Commodore63 4y ago
I am not a fan of Jack and am an outspoken skeptic of Elon, but I agreed heartily with the contents of the texts.
booboofixer 4y ago
How has nobody commented on the fact that Elon has saved Jack Dorsey's contact with the name 'jack jack'[0] ? [0] https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Jack-Jack_Parr https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Jack-Jack_Parr
throwaway285762 4y ago
I don't understand why techies keep working on these uncontrollable platforms, when they are clearly incompatible with how society works. What's the problem that they are trying to solve? "How do we change society to anarcho-communism"? Stop making these decentralised uncontrollable platforms, they just get overtaken or shut down by authorities, because we don't live in a lawless society. Currencies that can't be controlled, publishing platforms that can't be controlled, platforms where people can work for free. I mean, really, what's the idea here, I'm really losing my patience with these experiments. They will never succeed anyway, because we still live in a physical world and even the most decentralised and uncontrollable platforms can just get shut down, as we have seen so many examples of. Why not try to make something that is actually compatible with how society works? Stop hacking for a moment and spend a little time understanding the domain.
fennecfoxy 4y ago
Isn't Mastodon/Matrix basically what Jack is envisioning here?
ploum 4y ago
For someone invested in decentralized protocols, it just sounds like people trying to reinvent the wheel. "let’s make it decentralized" "wow, very cool idea". Those guys are business guys but they have no idea what they are talking about. They don’t know the first bit about technical decentralization, about prior art, about the politics involved. They are so close of realizing that their companies are Frankenstein monsters they don’t control anymore. They are so close of getting the whole idea that Stallman is trying to articulate for the late 40 years. But they are locked in their business/company/VC model and can’t get out of that.
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  > Twitter started as a protocol. It should have never been a company. That was the original sin. Dorsey seems to have figured it out.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - saryant 4y ago
    No he’s just making shit up. That statement of his is completely untrue.
  - once_inc 4y ago
    Considering Dorsey's active participation and evangelising on Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, I expect that he will be working in that direction; building a messaging protocol based on the Lighting Network that allows users to upvote with satoshis. This monetises the user engagement and makes bots less feasible, aligning user incentives.
    - bamboozled 4y ago
      - mw888 4y ago
        Your comment serves no purpose, offers no feedback, and is rude.
        bamboozled 4y ago
        It's a genuine question? It sounds so outrageous I couldn't tell if it was satire or not? We've all become a little sensitive?
      - irusensei 4y ago
        Please refrain from low quality snarky comments. > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.[0] [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
once_inc 4y ago
This is pretty cool; the internal messaging of big tech heads. Really interesting to see the way these bigshots converse; terse, to the point, no-nonsense.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Fiahil 4y ago
  No-Nonsense ? > "It's likely the best option. I just have doubts. But open" NO-NONSENSE ?
  - hk__2 4y ago
    Where is the nonsense? He says he thinks it’s the best solution but is not 100% sure about it so he’s open to discussion.
  - feet 4y ago
    People will see what they want in their idols
- plazmatic 4y ago
- tomtheelder 4y ago
  This text thread is basically entirely nonsense. They are speaking in pointlessly vague terms about "big ideas" that aren't new, novel, or interesting.
perihelions 4y ago
-- Screenshot 1: [Jack Dorsey] "Yes, a new platform is needed. It can't be a company. This is why I left." [Jack Dorsey] "https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507777913042571267?s=20&t=8z3h0h0JG5ntB6Zuxd6lWg https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507777913042571267?s=20..." [Elon Musk] "Ok" [Elon Musk] "What should it look like?" [Jack Dorsey] "I believe it must be an open source protocol, funded by a foundation of sorts that doesn't own the protocol, only advances it. A bit like what Signal has done. It can't have an advertising model. Otherwise you have surface area that governments and advertisers will try to influence and control. If it has a centralized entity behind it, it will be attacked. This isn't complicated work, it just has to be done right so it's resilient to what has happened to twitter." [Elon Musk] "Super interesting idea" -- Screenshot 2: [Jack Dorsey] "I'm off the twitter board mid May and then completely out of company. I intend to do this work and fix our mistakes. Twitter started as a protocol. It should have never been a company. That was the original sin." [Elon Musk] "I'd like to help if I am able to" [Jack Dorsey] "I wanted to talk with you about it after I was all clear, because you care so much, get it's importance, and could def help in immeasurable ways. Back when we had the activist come in, I tried my hardest to get you on our board, and our board said no. That's about the time l decided I needed to work to leave, as hard as it was for me." [Elon Musk] "Do you have a moment to talk?" [Jack Dorsey] "Bout to head out to dinner but can for a minute" -- Screenshot 3: [Jack Dorsey] "I think the main reason is the board is just super risk averse and saw adding you as more risk, which I thought was completely stupid and backwards, but I only had one vote, and 3% of company, and no dual class shares. Hard set up. We can discuss more." [Elon Musk] "Let's definitely discuss more" [Elon Musk] "I think it's worth both trying to move Twitter in a better direction and doing something new that's decentralized" [Jack Dorsey] "It's likely the best option. I just have doubts. But open" Plaintext from https://www.techemails.com/p/elon-musks-twitter-texts https://www.techemails.com/p/elon-musks-twitter-texts
- cassianoleal 4y ago
  So, they want to create Mastodon?
  - k__ 4y ago
    Probably. Mastodon is lacking marketing, big names, etc. Could be that their solution isn't different from Mastodon in a technical way, but still is more successful.
pelagicAustral 4y ago
Sounds like a good idea but clearly not in the best interest of investors, so nothing new there really.
mikojan 4y ago
This item of Musk v. Twitter gossip finally made me empathise with all the people complaining about the “…in Rust” links
robertwt7 4y ago
This is quite interesting to see because Jack has plenty of stock in twitter obviously? So it kind of shows that he doesn’t really care about profits, instead he wants to do more interesting thing, what a geek, just like all of us lol. Or the other way to see it is that he felt that twitter can’t be saved and he wants to create a new profitable thing.. who knows about how billionaires think
- lm28469 4y ago
  > So it kind of shows that he doesn’t really care about profits Even without twitter he's a multi billionaire
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    If twitter was a protocol, in all likelyhood he would not have become a multi millionaire let alone a millionaire.
- CPLX 4y ago
  Billionaires care deeply about money. For the most part it’s accurate to say it’s the only thing they care about, but it’s certainly the thing they care about most. If you care more about anything more than money you have so many opportunities to express that preference long before you get to a billion dollars that the existence of the billion dollars pretty much proves that there’s nothing above money on the list.
  - SyzygistSix 4y ago
    That doesn't seem correct to me. Using Rivian as an example, at what point did any founders become "billionaires" i.e. their stock/ownership value was at a billion? I'm guessing long before they had a working assembly line. I think people misunderstand how little a billion dollars can be when it refers to net worth and particularly one's stock ownership.
lm28469 4y ago
> I intend to do this work and fix our mistakes Sounds like every other billionaire who once they have one foot in the grave rediscover themselves as philanthropists... You can't fix it Jack, you fucked it up big time and shitting out yet another platform won't ever make it better
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  >Sounds like every other billionaire who once they have one foot in the grave rediscover themselves as philanthropists... It's certainly a profound statement you make. But the world isn't entirely kind to the ones that start out as philanthropists either.
- imjonse 4y ago
  > Sounds like every other billionaire who once they have one foot in the grave rediscover themselves as philanthropists... Or like most US presidents discovering the war on drugs is a scam and the military-industrial-entertainment complex is out of control only after they leave office...
  - wyldfire 4y ago
    I don't think that's old age. a young president could serve a single term, lose re-election and still be under 40. In their post-presidency they have the freedom of not pandering in order to be re-elected so they can speak freely. But this is independent of their age/mortality.
    - imjonse 4y ago
      I did not imply anything about age. And there was no president under 42 so far, and one that finishes a term before 40 would be a stretch since 35 is the minimum age limit for being elected POTUS.
  - WHA8m 4y ago
    Remember, this was not intended to be public. You read this as a public statement when it's really just a leaked chat conversation. Your version might still be true, but this is not proof for it.
andrewflnr 4y ago
I have to admit this is a bit surprising from Musk. I was pretty firmly of the theory that his real motive re Twitter was basically narcissism, and I'm still not sure that's wrong. I note he's not agreeing strongly with Dorsey, with the strongest phrase being "I'd like to help if I can". And I still think he would be better off using any money he might have spent buying Twitter on funding a handful of open source competitors instead. The most charitable reason I can think of for trying to salvage Twitter for this grand goal of fixing web communication is to keep the network effect of having everyone be there. Would that even be meaningful in a real transition to something with a totally different architecture?
- vernon99 4y ago
  Why would this transition ever happen? Network effect is too strong. How open-sourcedness of an alternative would help with this fact?
  - stefs 4y ago
    network effects are overcome all the time. all the social networks are dying sooner or later. even facebook is panicking because they're losing the next generation and instagram is panically trying to emulate tiktok or whatever because they have _something_.
    - shapefrog 4y ago
      MySpace
    - beoberha 4y ago
      I agree that most social media networks have been cyclical, but Twitter seems to stand the test of time. Maybe not with the youngest generations, but Twitter definitely hasn’t seen the exodus that Facebook has.
- brandall10 4y ago
  It’s likely 99.9% of Twitter’s user base does not care about this issue. Would be hard to build a product that is compelling enough to overcome the extreme network effect of something that is arguably a utility.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
helsinkiandrew 4y ago
Shame he couldn't do anything about that when he was either CEO, chairman or on the board of Twitter (for most of its existence). As Bloomberg said yesterday: "Twitter Is in This Mess Because Jack Dorsey Was Too Busy Being a Bitcoin Influencer" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-29/twitter-twtr-s-elon-musk-mess-exposes-jack-dorsey-s-flaws https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-29/twitter-t... https://archive.ph/7ugqn https://archive.ph/7ugqn
- ekianjo 4y ago
  Bloomberg are idiots talking out of their asses. They have never worked in tech companies
  - planb 4y ago
    This is funny, because that's exactly the thing "The Old Industries" said before being disrupted by tech companies.
    - kspacewalk2 4y ago
      Bloomberg itself is "the old industries", in several domains including supposed-journalism. In the parlance of starry-eyed overglorified bloggers, they're the "legacy media".
  - currenciessfe 4y ago
    You are both right and wrong. Bloomberg IS a tech company. But the journalists obviously don't mingle with that part.
    - morelisp 4y ago
      More like, "tech company" has nothing to do with whether a company's product or competitive advantage lies in technology and just means "popular company" or today more like "SHR-funded company". I'm reminded of how often I had to read about "tech companies vs. telcos", "tech companies vs. ISPs" during the net neutrality discussion, or "tech company vs. car company" for AVs, or "tech company vs. broadcaster" for streaming/advertising...
crizzlenizzle 4y ago
> Twitter started as a protocol. Can someone help me understand that? When and how did it start as a protocol?
- cammikebrown 4y ago
  He might have meant that the “idea” of Twitter was originally a protocol.
  - NateEag 4y ago
    I don't have a source, but I have a nagging feeling that I once read that Twitter's original goal was to be a platform-independent away message. If true, that's very much a protocol in intent, even if not in practice.
Trufa 4y ago
Unlike everyone else here apparently, I find his attitude pretty positive. You all act as if you would have know what twitter would become from the beginning and you would have done better, I've been in infinitesimally smaller projects with pressures that have nothing to do with building Twitter and still I thought like I was losing control of the direction the product was going.
- api 4y ago
  It’s pretty hard for even CEOs to control direction sometimes especially in big companies. A company is like a cthonic beast with many writhing tentacles that is in fact composed of thousands of cats. A black mass of cats, writhing, seeking, crawling toward anything that will increase its share price or get a cat promoted…
  - qznc 4y ago
    Companies are AI. http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/companies_are_ai.html http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/companies_are_ai.html
    - hansjorg 4y ago
      More like complex organisms existing within and alongside other massive complex organisms. Nothing artificial about it?
      - etiennebausson 4y ago
        Bacteria, either symbiotic or not. Some are outright cancerous growth, though. Then again, my opinion on organized religion is the same, without the symbiotic aspect.
      - robotresearcher 4y ago
        Companies are technology. People invented them to do work.
    - corney91 4y ago
mFixman 4y ago
Where do these emails and texts come from? Does US litigation force companies to reveal executives' communications?
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  In the US, part of litigation is something called discovery. This is when involved parties ask for and provide documents to establish facts of the case (requests can also be disputed, and deleting documents is a Problem). The communication of executives with Musk would be relevant to a civil case between Musk and a company. Litigation isn’t something that should generally be taken lightly because things like discovery will tend to bring dirty laundry into public record unless documents are given additional requests to seal them. And even these seals can be litigated for certain interested parties to access them.
dreamer7 4y ago
The chat thread looked so farcical that I had to double check it wasn't a parody account. Is it possible the text has been edited? It just looks too scripted, especially since Jack Dorsey had shared his thoughts regarding Twitter being intended as a protocol publicly.
- cammikebrown 4y ago
  This doesn’t really strike me as private conversation. Jack was probably just telling Elon because he probably didn’t know about the protocol comments. I follow Twitter pretty closely and I didn’t know he said that.
- altcognito 4y ago
  Completely agree, none of the facts align with what they are saying. I mean imagine having billions of dollars in your pocket and pretending you can’t start a protocol that looks like mastodon or xmpp… These guys know their records are going to be subpoenaed.
  - currenciessfe 4y ago
    You mean like Google which invested billions in Plus?
    - rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
      >billions Source?
      - ajkjk 4y ago
        Seems self-evident based on how many products it touched.
- qznc 4y ago
  It feels too clean to me. No typos, no emojis, correct punctuation…
KennyBlanken 4y ago
darkwater 4y ago
I really, like REALLY thought it was a fake and parody tweet about their "tweeting styles¨. Turns out they are real messages.
mikessoft_gmail 4y ago
mikessoft_gmail 4y ago
timdaub 4y ago
I've written about credible neutrality of protocols in the context of crypto (where this strategy has been pioneered): https://timdaub.github.io/2022/03/11/ethereum-is-the-newsfeed-we-deserve/ https://timdaub.github.io/2022/03/11/ethereum-is-the-newsfee...
brethil 4y ago
Is he talking about ActivityPub[1, 2] and the Fediverse[3]? Just look at Mastodon[4, 5] if you're looking for something like twitter without the centralization and the corporate greed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub [2] https://activitypub.rocks https://activitypub.rocks [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) [5] https://joinmastodon.org/servers https://joinmastodon.org/servers
- _-david-_ 4y ago
  He is almost certainly talking about Bluesky. It was created by Twitter after all.
- niutech 4y ago
  There are also: GNU Social (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social) and Friendica (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica) both open source and based on OStatus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus).
- kethinov 4y ago
  It frustrates me that Jack seems to have genuine interest in this topic but seems to be totally averse to discussing Mastodon. It's hard to believe he's unaware of Mastodon, so we have to believe he thinks it's not the solution for some reason. But how could it not be? Why doesn't he just use his big name and significant influence to throw his weight behind Twitter's most successful open protocol competitor if he really wants this? None of it makes sense to me and I wish he would speak more plainly on the matter.
  - stiltzkin 4y ago
    Does Mastodon have measures vs bots and spam?, I think that's one of the issues they want to face for an alternative to Twitter.
skerit 4y ago
Dorsey has said in the past (tweeted even) that he wanted to turn Twitter into a federated protocol. It was 1 random message, and then never brought up again. Interesting that he's still thinking about that.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  See bluesky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_(protocol)
medion 4y ago
What/who is Dorsey referring to when he says "Back when we had the activist come in" ? It's cute Musk thinks decentralised Twitter is a 'Super interesting idea' - come on, really? It's like two people discussing Blockchain when it first entered into the Zeitgeist a decade ago.
- bkishan 4y ago
  Mudge, maybe?
  - happyopossum 4y ago
    Where would you get any indication that Mudge is/was an activist? Or that Dorsey would have seen him as such 6 months ago?
- helsinkiandrew 4y ago
  Probably the "Activist Shareholders" - Elliott Management - that tried to get seats on the board (and kick him out) in 2020.
pgt 4y ago
With texts like this being disclosed, I am surprised that any communications at this level are still happening over surveilled networks.
- generj 4y ago
  The courts can frown on deliberately choosing mediums that can’t be subpoenaed. For example Musk didn’t provide a screenshot of a Signal he sent; the recipient also received a subpoena and sent a screenshot of the text. Twitter is therefore asking for adverse inference about Musk’s discovery compliance. But also notice all the times they ask for a phone call, which wouldn’t be recorded (other than that it happened and length). Of course the contents of that call can be asked about in deposition but people lie, misremember, don’t recall, or “don’t recall” all the time in depositions.
- ironlake 4y ago
  Surveilled doesn't come into play here. The text messages were ordered to be disclosed and the people involved complied. It doesn't matter that the conversation was encrypted, if you have a record, you have to turn it over. Using a messaging service that automatically deletes old messages might be a way to avoid it.
ur-whale 4y ago
https://nitter.net/techemails/status/1575588277700026368 https://nitter.net/techemails/status/1575588277700026368
naillo 4y ago
This makes me feel like he's buying and pulling out for some purpose of sabotaging it so something else can take its place.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
criley2 4y ago
"I want to to be decentralized and not open to government interference" So what happens when it's taken over by terrorists? What happens when, much like every "right-wing alternative", it becomes filled with propaganda-addicted radicals planning and organizing real-world violence? What happens when the kiddy-diddlers fill it with CSAM? "Ok, I want to have the ability to ban people, block content, suppress views" So, twitter?
aaron695 4y ago
nerdawson 4y ago
What would happen in the event that both parties had deleted a communication like a text or email before a request was received? Are they compelled to hold onto them or something? I always find it surprising when messages like this come to light.
bmitc 4y ago
Decentralization has never worked in human history beyond hunter gatherers. It’s continually amazing to me that people listen to people like Musk and Dorsey as if they have a clue they know what they’re talking about. You can tell they have full confidence that they do, trapped in their bubble of fame.
- swalsh 4y ago
  Because centralization works REALLY well, right? That's why the US practices decentralized command, that's why centralized economies have been so successful. This idea that decentralization has never worked is insane.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    I didn’t say centralization works well. My point is that anything “decentralized” becomes not so or if not, doesn’t work well. Do you have examples of something decentralized that has stayed so and was not taken over by centralization or became highly bottlenecked or continued to work well?
  - WHA8m 4y ago
    That's always an important question to ask when we discuss new ideas. New ideas doesn't arise for no reason. There are problems and people will ignore (not negate) them to defend the status quo when discussing alternative paths. As always, the truth lies somewhere between and that's why we love HN. We're not twitter.
- Sembiance 4y ago
  HTTP is decentralized. That’s actually worked out really well I think, no sarcasm intended.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    It may be decentralized as a protocol, but the thing it’s part of and supports, the Internet, is not decentralized in effect.
- 4y ago
swalsh 4y ago
I think crypto has a place in Web3, but truely this is EXACTLY what I want from Web3. It's not all about on-chain dapps, it's a return to protocols.
kidsil 4y ago
Reading this conversation reminded me of something Steve Jobs once said: "Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again"
- swalsh 4y ago
  Intelligence has diminishing returns. Not enough, and that is a problem, but as you get more it becomes worth less and less by itself. The most valuable commodity in our economy is productive attention. A dude with a 105 IQ who "grinds" 16 hours a day will out-compete a dude with a 130 IQ who has a million ideas and thoughts, but can't grind them to reality. Of course someone who is high in both, can become Elon Musk.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    You forgot the bit where you inherit an apartheid emerald fortune.
    - Cwizard 4y ago
      I will be honest, even if I would inherit a fortune 2x as large I would still not be able to achieve what that guy has done. Impressive regardless of any inherited ‘privilege’. Sure he is a little weird but who isn’t.
      - svnt 4y ago
        You would also need the capitalist indoctrination at a young age so you’re inherently acquisitive at an animal level, and then a ton of luck. You would likely get the first part for free if your parents managed to amass that kind of fortune. The second part is just success bias over a large enough population.
    - b112 4y ago
      So your assertion is that people who start with capital, always succeed, irrespective of the parent's statement? Because loads of people have a leg up, and go absolutely no where.
londons_explore 4y ago
These comments will get him in trouble right? He appears to be organising a competitor to twitter while on the board of twitter...
SilverBirch 4y ago
I think to a certain extent there's an overwhelming culture in the SV VC world of being completely credulous. That exchange just seems like a uniquely weird situation of two people talking absolute bollocks and neither being willing to mention the elephant in the room. It's no wonder the second their plan hit the real world it exploded on impact. You would have thought the guy who ran twitter would actually understand the challenges that faced twitter, but I guess he really was so unengaged he's just unaware. They sound like 13 year olds.
- kevinmchugh 4y ago
  Consider they're at least somewhat aware this conversation would be subpoenaed during a lawsuit should the acquisition go sour. Musk's "can we talk on the phone?" means "tell me more, but without the evidence trail"
  - birdman3131 4y ago
    It can mean that or more likely means "We have gone past the usefulness of async short texts as a means of conversations." Text/tweets are useful but are sub optimal for actually discussing stuff like this. Voice is so much better in this case.
    - Huh1337 4y ago
      What? I've literally never felt this way. Every time someone wanted to have a call with me, it was so they could push me into something with their whining, or so they could misinterpret what was said without me being able to point at a timestamped sentence. For these reasons I always refuse calls about anything important - and never had any problems solving various business issues over text. How specifically is text less/not useful?
      - kaiwen1 4y ago
        It would appear by implication that you would see meetings as always less useful than documents. This is clearly not true. Calls and meetings are almost always better for working through nuanced issues.
ilaksh 4y ago
https://github.com/freenet/locutus https://github.com/freenet/locutus https://github.com/orbitdb/orbit-db https://github.com/orbitdb/orbit-db
mola 4y ago
There's an axiom in discussions here where Twitter needs saving. Why? In what way is it non successful? In what way is it broken? I mean most Twitter discussions I ever saw are disgusting or plain dumb mascarading as profound. I don't think the medium of a public square like that is a good thing, and I would be happy to see its demise. But it seems successful in the way it usually lead the public discourse similarly to how newspapers did. So what's exactly wrong with Twitter from that perspective? It seems very successful.
- weeblewobble 4y ago
  I think there's two answers to this question. For Musk, the answer is pretty clearly that he thinks Twitter is poorly run as a business and has no respect or confidence in their management. He thinks he can change the company to make more money. For all the VC types he's texting with, Twitter is broken because it bans people, and because (they believe) those bans are biased against conservatives. The ban (actually a suspension) of the Babylon Bee twitter account for a satirical article naming a specific individual transwoman "man of the year" seems to have been a radicalizing moment among the tech oligarchy
  - mola 4y ago
    I didn't see a coherent claim by musk about the business side of Twitter. What are his qualms? He shitposts all the time, he sends his masses of fan boys to pile on adversaries. These are exactly the type of things that makes Twitter a cesspool. I guess expecting integrity and coherence from ppl who are the new royalty is anachronistic on my part. It's all about power and influence. The rest is just show.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  > In what way is it broken? My biggest issue with Twitter is the lack of moderation, theres SO much propaganda on there. I report tweets where someone threatens someone and they are like 'oh no violation'... I reported a tweet with a video of ukraine where they showed un-blured body parts of dead people and a message praising russian soldiers for 'smashing nazis into little pieces'... and it was 'no violation' (thankfully this was removed when I reported it a second time) And Twitter is banned in China, yet the number of accounts which have location set to China, you shouldn't even be able to select China and there should be no state run media accounts.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
yalogin 4y ago
I am sure Dorsey understands he can’t put the cat back in bag even if he really wanted to. Twitter is a company and a company platform whether he likes it or not. More so it’s been a company for 16yrs now, so I wouldn’t put any ounce of credence to this dialogue other than a founder ruing his mistakes. It just served to seed the idea in Musk’s brain to buy it.
jmull 4y ago
This seems like double-talk to me. The talk is about decentralization, but also bakes in the idea it will be done exactly to their specification. Nonsense, of course. Not to mention mastodon already exists.
- once_inc 4y ago
  As Satoshi Nakamoto noted: "The nature of Bitcoin is such that once version 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime." I can imagine Dorsey wants to strive for the same thing: build a protocol in such a way that it becomes very difficult to change key aspects of the system.
gonehome 4y ago
Reading these it makes me wonder if they know about Urbit - it’s so much of what Jack wants that I’m really curious if he just doesn’t know about it.
- ajkjk 4y ago
  Well urbit is kind of, like, a joke, right?
  - gonehome 4y ago
    It's a serious project: https://zalberico.com/essay/2022/09/28/tlon-urbit-computing-freedom.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2022/09/28/tlon-urbit-computing-... There's a lot of weird marketing, but it's a real thing.
    - ajkjk 4y ago
      I'm amuse to find that https://urbit.org/ https://urbit.org/ is a lot more legit-looking than it used to be. Good for them. Is it still based on 'Hoon' and 'Nock' though? Because inventing your own nonsense programming language is antithetical to a serious attempt at building something.
      - gonehome 4y ago
        Except for the times it’s not. C was invented at some point too. Nock and Hoon serve a purpose and exist for a reason.
        ajkjk 4y ago
        In principal there might be a time where it's necessary. In practice Nock and Hoon aren't it and are a joke.
        gonehome 4y ago
        You clearly have some sort of axe to grind so I’ll leave it here.
elil17 4y ago
You can see in the other Tweets posted by that account that he acknowledges that he knows Twitter has fake users prior to making a private offer. Although the fake users thing was never and is not a valid legal reason to void the contract. However, it's incredible to see that he didn't have the foresight not text about the fact that he knew this ahead of time.
- happyopossum 4y ago
  You're either deliberately ignoring facts to retcon this, or have not paid much attention to this at all. The question has never been "are there bots?"; it has been "did Twitter mislead me/the public about how many?".
  - weeblewobble 4y ago
    But he says he wants to take the company private because if they fix their bot estimates it will tank the stock price. Which implies he "knew" the bot estimates were wrong (to the extent they were, which seems dubious based on available evidence) or in other words he was not misled
Helmut10001 4y ago
Jack, are you speaking of the Matrix Protocol? [1] [1]: https://spec.matrix.org/ https://spec.matrix.org/ [2]: https://matrix.org/foundation/ https://matrix.org/foundation/
- Arathorn 4y ago
  We showed Matrix to Jack and Parag last year - https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/18/introducing-cerulean/ https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/18/introducing-cerulean/ was the demo. I think Jack might have been wanting with more BTC tho(?)
  - Helmut10001 4y ago
    Nice! I love the matrix cerulean demo! So unfortunate that the Cerulean threading PR seems to have been declined by the community. [1] [1]: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/2836 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/283...
seydor 4y ago
Let's unironically place our hopes for a decentralized internet on billionaires I found the other set of texts between Elon and Parag was even funnier.
qprofyeh 4y ago
It's so obvious that Musk was not really interested. The social balance was totally non-existent in this conversation. Musk's one line replies sound so generic. Seems like he wanted to keep the door open but Dorsey hadn't convinced him really yet. "I'd like to help if I can" is such a without obligation sentence. Then Jack replies with another well-designed text.
- epinephrinios 4y ago
  Generally I might agree but not in this instance. This is typical Elon Musk communication style.
- stardenburden 4y ago
  It certainly seems this way. But something must've changed later on, otherwise Musk wouldn't have tried to buy Twitter.
- towaway15463 4y ago
  Have you listened to Elon speak? He’s not exactly gifted when it comes to conversational skills. His texts read pretty typical for someone more interested in working out details than wasting time on small talk.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dontreact 4y ago
  I agree. My read on this set of texts is Musk trying to get Dorsey on his side to help with the acquisition.
jejeyyy77 4y ago
crypto has no use cases amirite??
wallaBBB 4y ago
From another Musk's conversation [1], if you ever wondered how you reach high management positions - hard work: Musk: Please send me anyone who actually writes good software Steve Jurvetson: Ok, no management good coders, got it. Musk: Yes Musk: Twitter is a software company (or should be) Jurvetson: Yes. My son at Reddit and some other young people come to mind. Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson texts to recommend former Uber exec, Emil Michael, for the Twitter CEO job. When Musk says he’s looking for people who can code, Jurvetson volunteers his son. [1] https://bigtechnology.substack.com/p/elon-musks-text-exchanges-show-twitter https://bigtechnology.substack.com/p/elon-musks-text-exchang...
ivoras 4y ago
I know they are talking about new sexy distributed / federated stuff, but we actually had what they were talking about a long long time ago, and it was distributed in a very similar way - orgs, corps and just plain people used to run NNTP and IRC servers as they pleased, and cooperated with each other as they wanted. Glad to see good ideas don't die, they just get reinvented.
- heeen2 4y ago
  see also matrix/element, xmpp, jabber and probably many more
ladyattis 4y ago
I'm not surprised by this. Isn't it the case that most founders usually get pushed out within a matter of a few years when a company finally finds its footing in the market? It doesn't seem to be all that common to see a founder stick around unless they've done everything they can to ensure they have the controlling stake in the company they created.
tayo42 4y ago
I don't get the point obsessive need for more Twitter, or the need for a protocol. Honestly I think the world needs less connectivity, with more thought going into communication We already have the internet where anyone can go an put something up for people to see
- aliqot 4y ago
  >I think the world needs less connectivity Enthusiastic yes here on that one. Internet was a great thing but its ubiquity outpaced our maturity to use it responsibly.
  - drstewart 4y ago
    The irony of posting these kind of takes on a highly popular internet message board.
    - tayo42 4y ago
      Could also mean I'm well experienced with highly connected communication and it'd downsides Also message boards aren't the same as Twitter
tiffanyh 4y ago
It sounds that Jack is aligned with Fred Wilson's thinking and what Fred has been advocating for years. Fred Wilson was an early investor and Board member at Twitter. https://twitter.com/fredwilson/status/1204800971211063296 https://twitter.com/fredwilson/status/1204800971211063296
prhrb 4y ago
Literally what mastodon and activitypub is
intrasight 4y ago
> doing something new that's decentralized It exists and it's called the Internet ;) As far as a new open protocol, again there are already organizations that manage such things.
memish 4y ago
Some other noteworthy texts. Musk: I interface way better with engineers who are able to do hardcore programming than with program manager / MBA types of people Agrawal: In our next convo- treat me like an engineer instead of CEO and lets see where we get to. - Musk: I basically following your advice! Dorsey: I know and I appreciate you. This is the right and only path. I’ll continue to do whatever it takes to make it work. - Marc Benioff: Happy to talk about it if this is interesting: Twitter conversational OS- the townsquare for your digital life Musk: Well I down own it yet - Satya Nadella: Thx for the chat. Will stay in touch. And will for sure follow-up on Teams feedback! - Musk: Please send me anyone who actually writes good software Steve Jurvetson: Ok, no management good coders, got it.
- gambler 4y ago
  Crazy conspiracy theories, eh? People running those companies routinely talk to one another. When it seems they act together, it's often because they actually do act together.
pmayrgundter 4y ago
Someone tell Jack and Elon that matrix.org could use their support. Sounds just like what they're talking about. Someone tell Matthew and Amandine at Matrix that it does actually need Write-All support. The only bit lacking.
- Arathorn 4y ago
  We showed Matrix to Jack via https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/18/introducing-cerulean/ https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/18/introducing-cerulean/ last year. We’re still hoping he may revisit it :)
  - pmayrgundter 4y ago
    Neat! I signed up and replied to thread on the announcement.. https://cerulean.matrix.org/@freality:dendrite.matrix.org/!o3r2XygCOPz3cWID:dendrite.matrix.org/$x4ELfukoSrkVmSCsUZtr2h-FbbCf85A0sDOGzlMjrMA https://cerulean.matrix.org/@freality:dendrite.matrix.org/!o...
    - Arathorn 4y ago
      yay - it still works :) Unfortunately I think it may have suffered from NIH syndrome.
kornhole 4y ago
I know both of these guys use signal.org. Such correspondence could not end up in public record unless one of them chose to make it public. Then comes the question of why they chose to make this correspondence public.
- advisedwang 4y ago
  If they have disappearing messages turned off and get a subpoena they are obliged to turn over those messages. I suspect, but I'm less sure, that if they have disappearing messages turned on but get a subpoena before the messages are actually deleted, then they are obliged to save them before they are deleted and turn them over.
stazz1 4y ago
Really interesting that Dorsey unironically says "governments" instead of "government" and expects us to believe that Twitter has not been aiding and abetting foreign assets after that whistleblower testimony came to light in Congress
- lordgilman 4y ago
  California is a government too, separate from the federal government of the United States, and it hasn't been shy about regulating tech companies. I don't think this jump to foreign governments is substantiated.
ashayh 4y ago
"Critical for humanity": https://twitter.com/kateconger/status/1575589049573601280/photo/1 https://twitter.com/kateconger/status/1575589049573601280/ph... What a joke.
- diag 4y ago
  Sounds like he's just trying to speak Elon's language to me.
MacroChip 4y ago
Interesting that Jack keeps the tracking code on Twitter shared links
- cuttysnark 4y ago
  Very interesting. I noticed that too, in part because I always remove it from the Twitter links I copy; even though I'm not entirely sure what/how it tracks, I know enough to know it's not needed to load the tweet in question.
ir77 4y ago
two white rich guys talking about a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. dorsey should be extremely happy that twitter even took off and not lament how he is going to start a new company to fix it. if this was his principle he should have reached out to people like musk to begin with and not drive twitter to motization, etc.
- seer-zig 4y ago
  What does their race have to do with the discussion?

529 points by boulos 4y ago

I am not a fan of Jack and am an outspoken skeptic of Elon, but I agreed heartily with the contents of the texts.

How has nobody commented on the fact that Elon has saved Jack Dorsey's contact with the name 'jack jack'[0] ? [0] https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Jack-Jack_Parr https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Jack-Jack_Parr

throwaway285762 4y ago

I don't understand why techies keep working on these uncontrollable platforms, when they are clearly incompatible with how society works. What's the problem that they are trying to solve? "How do we change society to anarcho-communism"? Stop making these decentralised uncontrollable platforms, they just get overtaken or shut down by authorities, because we don't live in a lawless society. Currencies that can't be controlled, publishing platforms that can't be controlled, platforms where people can work for free. I mean, really, what's the idea here, I'm really losing my patience with these experiments. They will never succeed anyway, because we still live in a physical world and even the most decentralised and uncontrollable platforms can just get shut down, as we have seen so many examples of. Why not try to make something that is actually compatible with how society works? Stop hacking for a moment and spend a little time understanding the domain.

fennecfoxy 4y ago

Isn't Mastodon/Matrix basically what Jack is envisioning here?

ploum 4y ago

For someone invested in decentralized protocols, it just sounds like people trying to reinvent the wheel. "let’s make it decentralized" "wow, very cool idea". Those guys are business guys but they have no idea what they are talking about. They don’t know the first bit about technical decentralization, about prior art, about the politics involved. They are so close of realizing that their companies are Frankenstein monsters they don’t control anymore. They are so close of getting the whole idea that Stallman is trying to articulate for the late 40 years. But they are locked in their business/company/VC model and can’t get out of that.

andrewflnr 4y ago
> Twitter started as a protocol. It should have never been a company. That was the original sin. Dorsey seems to have figured it out.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- saryant 4y ago
  No he’s just making shit up. That statement of his is completely untrue.
- once_inc 4y ago
  Considering Dorsey's active participation and evangelising on Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, I expect that he will be working in that direction; building a messaging protocol based on the Lighting Network that allows users to upvote with satoshis. This monetises the user engagement and makes bots less feasible, aligning user incentives.
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    - mw888 4y ago
      Your comment serves no purpose, offers no feedback, and is rude.
      - bamboozled 4y ago
        It's a genuine question? It sounds so outrageous I couldn't tell if it was satire or not? We've all become a little sensitive?
    - irusensei 4y ago
      Please refrain from low quality snarky comments. > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.[0] [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

once_inc 4y ago

This is pretty cool; the internal messaging of big tech heads. Really interesting to see the way these bigshots converse; terse, to the point, no-nonsense.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Fiahil 4y ago
No-Nonsense ? > "It's likely the best option. I just have doubts. But open" NO-NONSENSE ?
- hk__2 4y ago
  Where is the nonsense? He says he thinks it’s the best solution but is not 100% sure about it so he’s open to discussion.
- feet 4y ago
  People will see what they want in their idols
plazmatic 4y ago
tomtheelder 4y ago
This text thread is basically entirely nonsense. They are speaking in pointlessly vague terms about "big ideas" that aren't new, novel, or interesting.

perihelions 4y ago

-- Screenshot 1: [Jack Dorsey] "Yes, a new platform is needed. It can't be a company. This is why I left." [Jack Dorsey] "https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507777913042571267?s=20&t=8z3h0h0JG5ntB6Zuxd6lWg https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507777913042571267?s=20..." [Elon Musk] "Ok" [Elon Musk] "What should it look like?" [Jack Dorsey] "I believe it must be an open source protocol, funded by a foundation of sorts that doesn't own the protocol, only advances it. A bit like what Signal has done. It can't have an advertising model. Otherwise you have surface area that governments and advertisers will try to influence and control. If it has a centralized entity behind it, it will be attacked. This isn't complicated work, it just has to be done right so it's resilient to what has happened to twitter." [Elon Musk] "Super interesting idea" -- Screenshot 2: [Jack Dorsey] "I'm off the twitter board mid May and then completely out of company. I intend to do this work and fix our mistakes. Twitter started as a protocol. It should have never been a company. That was the original sin." [Elon Musk] "I'd like to help if I am able to" [Jack Dorsey] "I wanted to talk with you about it after I was all clear, because you care so much, get it's importance, and could def help in immeasurable ways. Back when we had the activist come in, I tried my hardest to get you on our board, and our board said no. That's about the time l decided I needed to work to leave, as hard as it was for me." [Elon Musk] "Do you have a moment to talk?" [Jack Dorsey] "Bout to head out to dinner but can for a minute" -- Screenshot 3: [Jack Dorsey] "I think the main reason is the board is just super risk averse and saw adding you as more risk, which I thought was completely stupid and backwards, but I only had one vote, and 3% of company, and no dual class shares. Hard set up. We can discuss more." [Elon Musk] "Let's definitely discuss more" [Elon Musk] "I think it's worth both trying to move Twitter in a better direction and doing something new that's decentralized" [Jack Dorsey] "It's likely the best option. I just have doubts. But open" Plaintext from https://www.techemails.com/p/elon-musks-twitter-texts https://www.techemails.com/p/elon-musks-twitter-texts

cassianoleal 4y ago
So, they want to create Mastodon?
- k__ 4y ago
  Probably. Mastodon is lacking marketing, big names, etc. Could be that their solution isn't different from Mastodon in a technical way, but still is more successful.

pelagicAustral 4y ago

Sounds like a good idea but clearly not in the best interest of investors, so nothing new there really.

mikojan 4y ago

This item of Musk v. Twitter gossip finally made me empathise with all the people complaining about the “…in Rust” links

robertwt7 4y ago

This is quite interesting to see because Jack has plenty of stock in twitter obviously? So it kind of shows that he doesn’t really care about profits, instead he wants to do more interesting thing, what a geek, just like all of us lol. Or the other way to see it is that he felt that twitter can’t be saved and he wants to create a new profitable thing.. who knows about how billionaires think

lm28469 4y ago
> So it kind of shows that he doesn’t really care about profits Even without twitter he's a multi billionaire
- shapefrog 4y ago
  If twitter was a protocol, in all likelyhood he would not have become a multi millionaire let alone a millionaire.
CPLX 4y ago
Billionaires care deeply about money. For the most part it’s accurate to say it’s the only thing they care about, but it’s certainly the thing they care about most. If you care more about anything more than money you have so many opportunities to express that preference long before you get to a billion dollars that the existence of the billion dollars pretty much proves that there’s nothing above money on the list.
- SyzygistSix 4y ago
  That doesn't seem correct to me. Using Rivian as an example, at what point did any founders become "billionaires" i.e. their stock/ownership value was at a billion? I'm guessing long before they had a working assembly line. I think people misunderstand how little a billion dollars can be when it refers to net worth and particularly one's stock ownership.

lm28469 4y ago

> I intend to do this work and fix our mistakes Sounds like every other billionaire who once they have one foot in the grave rediscover themselves as philanthropists... You can't fix it Jack, you fucked it up big time and shitting out yet another platform won't ever make it better

dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
>Sounds like every other billionaire who once they have one foot in the grave rediscover themselves as philanthropists... It's certainly a profound statement you make. But the world isn't entirely kind to the ones that start out as philanthropists either.
imjonse 4y ago
> Sounds like every other billionaire who once they have one foot in the grave rediscover themselves as philanthropists... Or like most US presidents discovering the war on drugs is a scam and the military-industrial-entertainment complex is out of control only after they leave office...
- wyldfire 4y ago
  I don't think that's old age. a young president could serve a single term, lose re-election and still be under 40. In their post-presidency they have the freedom of not pandering in order to be re-elected so they can speak freely. But this is independent of their age/mortality.
  - imjonse 4y ago
    I did not imply anything about age. And there was no president under 42 so far, and one that finishes a term before 40 would be a stretch since 35 is the minimum age limit for being elected POTUS.
- WHA8m 4y ago
  Remember, this was not intended to be public. You read this as a public statement when it's really just a leaked chat conversation. Your version might still be true, but this is not proof for it.

andrewflnr 4y ago

I have to admit this is a bit surprising from Musk. I was pretty firmly of the theory that his real motive re Twitter was basically narcissism, and I'm still not sure that's wrong. I note he's not agreeing strongly with Dorsey, with the strongest phrase being "I'd like to help if I can". And I still think he would be better off using any money he might have spent buying Twitter on funding a handful of open source competitors instead. The most charitable reason I can think of for trying to salvage Twitter for this grand goal of fixing web communication is to keep the network effect of having everyone be there. Would that even be meaningful in a real transition to something with a totally different architecture?

vernon99 4y ago
Why would this transition ever happen? Network effect is too strong. How open-sourcedness of an alternative would help with this fact?
- stefs 4y ago
  network effects are overcome all the time. all the social networks are dying sooner or later. even facebook is panicking because they're losing the next generation and instagram is panically trying to emulate tiktok or whatever because they have _something_.
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    MySpace
  - beoberha 4y ago
    I agree that most social media networks have been cyclical, but Twitter seems to stand the test of time. Maybe not with the youngest generations, but Twitter definitely hasn’t seen the exodus that Facebook has.
brandall10 4y ago
It’s likely 99.9% of Twitter’s user base does not care about this issue. Would be hard to build a product that is compelling enough to overcome the extreme network effect of something that is arguably a utility.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

helsinkiandrew 4y ago

Shame he couldn't do anything about that when he was either CEO, chairman or on the board of Twitter (for most of its existence). As Bloomberg said yesterday: "Twitter Is in This Mess Because Jack Dorsey Was Too Busy Being a Bitcoin Influencer" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-29/twitter-twtr-s-elon-musk-mess-exposes-jack-dorsey-s-flaws https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-29/twitter-t... https://archive.ph/7ugqn https://archive.ph/7ugqn

ekianjo 4y ago
Bloomberg are idiots talking out of their asses. They have never worked in tech companies
- planb 4y ago
  This is funny, because that's exactly the thing "The Old Industries" said before being disrupted by tech companies.
  - kspacewalk2 4y ago
    Bloomberg itself is "the old industries", in several domains including supposed-journalism. In the parlance of starry-eyed overglorified bloggers, they're the "legacy media".
- currenciessfe 4y ago
  You are both right and wrong. Bloomberg IS a tech company. But the journalists obviously don't mingle with that part.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    More like, "tech company" has nothing to do with whether a company's product or competitive advantage lies in technology and just means "popular company" or today more like "SHR-funded company". I'm reminded of how often I had to read about "tech companies vs. telcos", "tech companies vs. ISPs" during the net neutrality discussion, or "tech company vs. car company" for AVs, or "tech company vs. broadcaster" for streaming/advertising...

crizzlenizzle 4y ago

> Twitter started as a protocol. Can someone help me understand that? When and how did it start as a protocol?

cammikebrown 4y ago
He might have meant that the “idea” of Twitter was originally a protocol.
- NateEag 4y ago
  I don't have a source, but I have a nagging feeling that I once read that Twitter's original goal was to be a platform-independent away message. If true, that's very much a protocol in intent, even if not in practice.

Trufa 4y ago

Unlike everyone else here apparently, I find his attitude pretty positive. You all act as if you would have know what twitter would become from the beginning and you would have done better, I've been in infinitesimally smaller projects with pressures that have nothing to do with building Twitter and still I thought like I was losing control of the direction the product was going.

api 4y ago
It’s pretty hard for even CEOs to control direction sometimes especially in big companies. A company is like a cthonic beast with many writhing tentacles that is in fact composed of thousands of cats. A black mass of cats, writhing, seeking, crawling toward anything that will increase its share price or get a cat promoted…
- qznc 4y ago
  Companies are AI. http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/companies_are_ai.html http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/companies_are_ai.html
  - hansjorg 4y ago
    More like complex organisms existing within and alongside other massive complex organisms. Nothing artificial about it?
    - etiennebausson 4y ago
      Bacteria, either symbiotic or not. Some are outright cancerous growth, though. Then again, my opinion on organized religion is the same, without the symbiotic aspect.
    - robotresearcher 4y ago
      Companies are technology. People invented them to do work.
  - corney91 4y ago

mFixman 4y ago

Where do these emails and texts come from? Does US litigation force companies to reveal executives' communications?

SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
In the US, part of litigation is something called discovery. This is when involved parties ask for and provide documents to establish facts of the case (requests can also be disputed, and deleting documents is a Problem). The communication of executives with Musk would be relevant to a civil case between Musk and a company. Litigation isn’t something that should generally be taken lightly because things like discovery will tend to bring dirty laundry into public record unless documents are given additional requests to seal them. And even these seals can be litigated for certain interested parties to access them.

dreamer7 4y ago

The chat thread looked so farcical that I had to double check it wasn't a parody account. Is it possible the text has been edited? It just looks too scripted, especially since Jack Dorsey had shared his thoughts regarding Twitter being intended as a protocol publicly.

cammikebrown 4y ago
This doesn’t really strike me as private conversation. Jack was probably just telling Elon because he probably didn’t know about the protocol comments. I follow Twitter pretty closely and I didn’t know he said that.
altcognito 4y ago
Completely agree, none of the facts align with what they are saying. I mean imagine having billions of dollars in your pocket and pretending you can’t start a protocol that looks like mastodon or xmpp… These guys know their records are going to be subpoenaed.
- currenciessfe 4y ago
  You mean like Google which invested billions in Plus?
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
    >billions Source?
    - ajkjk 4y ago
      Seems self-evident based on how many products it touched.
qznc 4y ago
It feels too clean to me. No typos, no emojis, correct punctuation…

KennyBlanken 4y ago

darkwater 4y ago

I really, like REALLY thought it was a fake and parody tweet about their "tweeting styles¨. Turns out they are real messages.

mikessoft_gmail 4y ago

timdaub 4y ago

I've written about credible neutrality of protocols in the context of crypto (where this strategy has been pioneered): https://timdaub.github.io/2022/03/11/ethereum-is-the-newsfeed-we-deserve/ https://timdaub.github.io/2022/03/11/ethereum-is-the-newsfee...

brethil 4y ago

Is he talking about ActivityPub[1, 2] and the Fediverse[3]? Just look at Mastodon[4, 5] if you're looking for something like twitter without the centralization and the corporate greed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub [2] https://activitypub.rocks https://activitypub.rocks [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) [5] https://joinmastodon.org/servers https://joinmastodon.org/servers

_-david-_ 4y ago
He is almost certainly talking about Bluesky. It was created by Twitter after all.
niutech 4y ago
There are also: GNU Social (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social) and Friendica (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica) both open source and based on OStatus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus).
kethinov 4y ago
It frustrates me that Jack seems to have genuine interest in this topic but seems to be totally averse to discussing Mastodon. It's hard to believe he's unaware of Mastodon, so we have to believe he thinks it's not the solution for some reason. But how could it not be? Why doesn't he just use his big name and significant influence to throw his weight behind Twitter's most successful open protocol competitor if he really wants this? None of it makes sense to me and I wish he would speak more plainly on the matter.
- stiltzkin 4y ago
  Does Mastodon have measures vs bots and spam?, I think that's one of the issues they want to face for an alternative to Twitter.

skerit 4y ago

Dorsey has said in the past (tweeted even) that he wanted to turn Twitter into a federated protocol. It was 1 random message, and then never brought up again. Interesting that he's still thinking about that.

bushbaba 4y ago
See bluesky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_(protocol)

medion 4y ago

What/who is Dorsey referring to when he says "Back when we had the activist come in" ? It's cute Musk thinks decentralised Twitter is a 'Super interesting idea' - come on, really? It's like two people discussing Blockchain when it first entered into the Zeitgeist a decade ago.

bkishan 4y ago
Mudge, maybe?
- happyopossum 4y ago
  Where would you get any indication that Mudge is/was an activist? Or that Dorsey would have seen him as such 6 months ago?
helsinkiandrew 4y ago
Probably the "Activist Shareholders" - Elliott Management - that tried to get seats on the board (and kick him out) in 2020.

pgt 4y ago

With texts like this being disclosed, I am surprised that any communications at this level are still happening over surveilled networks.

generj 4y ago
The courts can frown on deliberately choosing mediums that can’t be subpoenaed. For example Musk didn’t provide a screenshot of a Signal he sent; the recipient also received a subpoena and sent a screenshot of the text. Twitter is therefore asking for adverse inference about Musk’s discovery compliance. But also notice all the times they ask for a phone call, which wouldn’t be recorded (other than that it happened and length). Of course the contents of that call can be asked about in deposition but people lie, misremember, don’t recall, or “don’t recall” all the time in depositions.
ironlake 4y ago
Surveilled doesn't come into play here. The text messages were ordered to be disclosed and the people involved complied. It doesn't matter that the conversation was encrypted, if you have a record, you have to turn it over. Using a messaging service that automatically deletes old messages might be a way to avoid it.

ur-whale 4y ago

https://nitter.net/techemails/status/1575588277700026368 https://nitter.net/techemails/status/1575588277700026368

naillo 4y ago

This makes me feel like he's buying and pulling out for some purpose of sabotaging it so something else can take its place.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

criley2 4y ago

"I want to to be decentralized and not open to government interference" So what happens when it's taken over by terrorists? What happens when, much like every "right-wing alternative", it becomes filled with propaganda-addicted radicals planning and organizing real-world violence? What happens when the kiddy-diddlers fill it with CSAM? "Ok, I want to have the ability to ban people, block content, suppress views" So, twitter?

aaron695 4y ago

nerdawson 4y ago

What would happen in the event that both parties had deleted a communication like a text or email before a request was received? Are they compelled to hold onto them or something? I always find it surprising when messages like this come to light.

bmitc 4y ago

Decentralization has never worked in human history beyond hunter gatherers. It’s continually amazing to me that people listen to people like Musk and Dorsey as if they have a clue they know what they’re talking about. You can tell they have full confidence that they do, trapped in their bubble of fame.

swalsh 4y ago
Because centralization works REALLY well, right? That's why the US practices decentralized command, that's why centralized economies have been so successful. This idea that decentralization has never worked is insane.
- bmitc 4y ago
  I didn’t say centralization works well. My point is that anything “decentralized” becomes not so or if not, doesn’t work well. Do you have examples of something decentralized that has stayed so and was not taken over by centralization or became highly bottlenecked or continued to work well?
- WHA8m 4y ago
  That's always an important question to ask when we discuss new ideas. New ideas doesn't arise for no reason. There are problems and people will ignore (not negate) them to defend the status quo when discussing alternative paths. As always, the truth lies somewhere between and that's why we love HN. We're not twitter.
Sembiance 4y ago
HTTP is decentralized. That’s actually worked out really well I think, no sarcasm intended.
- bmitc 4y ago
  It may be decentralized as a protocol, but the thing it’s part of and supports, the Internet, is not decentralized in effect.
4y ago

swalsh 4y ago

I think crypto has a place in Web3, but truely this is EXACTLY what I want from Web3. It's not all about on-chain dapps, it's a return to protocols.

kidsil 4y ago

Reading this conversation reminded me of something Steve Jobs once said: "Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again"

swalsh 4y ago
Intelligence has diminishing returns. Not enough, and that is a problem, but as you get more it becomes worth less and less by itself. The most valuable commodity in our economy is productive attention. A dude with a 105 IQ who "grinds" 16 hours a day will out-compete a dude with a 130 IQ who has a million ideas and thoughts, but can't grind them to reality. Of course someone who is high in both, can become Elon Musk.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  You forgot the bit where you inherit an apartheid emerald fortune.
  - Cwizard 4y ago
    I will be honest, even if I would inherit a fortune 2x as large I would still not be able to achieve what that guy has done. Impressive regardless of any inherited ‘privilege’. Sure he is a little weird but who isn’t.
    - svnt 4y ago
      You would also need the capitalist indoctrination at a young age so you’re inherently acquisitive at an animal level, and then a ton of luck. You would likely get the first part for free if your parents managed to amass that kind of fortune. The second part is just success bias over a large enough population.
  - b112 4y ago
    So your assertion is that people who start with capital, always succeed, irrespective of the parent's statement? Because loads of people have a leg up, and go absolutely no where.

londons_explore 4y ago

These comments will get him in trouble right? He appears to be organising a competitor to twitter while on the board of twitter...

SilverBirch 4y ago

I think to a certain extent there's an overwhelming culture in the SV VC world of being completely credulous. That exchange just seems like a uniquely weird situation of two people talking absolute bollocks and neither being willing to mention the elephant in the room. It's no wonder the second their plan hit the real world it exploded on impact. You would have thought the guy who ran twitter would actually understand the challenges that faced twitter, but I guess he really was so unengaged he's just unaware. They sound like 13 year olds.

kevinmchugh 4y ago
Consider they're at least somewhat aware this conversation would be subpoenaed during a lawsuit should the acquisition go sour. Musk's "can we talk on the phone?" means "tell me more, but without the evidence trail"
- birdman3131 4y ago
  It can mean that or more likely means "We have gone past the usefulness of async short texts as a means of conversations." Text/tweets are useful but are sub optimal for actually discussing stuff like this. Voice is so much better in this case.
  - Huh1337 4y ago
    What? I've literally never felt this way. Every time someone wanted to have a call with me, it was so they could push me into something with their whining, or so they could misinterpret what was said without me being able to point at a timestamped sentence. For these reasons I always refuse calls about anything important - and never had any problems solving various business issues over text. How specifically is text less/not useful?
    - kaiwen1 4y ago
      It would appear by implication that you would see meetings as always less useful than documents. This is clearly not true. Calls and meetings are almost always better for working through nuanced issues.

ilaksh 4y ago

https://github.com/freenet/locutus https://github.com/freenet/locutus https://github.com/orbitdb/orbit-db https://github.com/orbitdb/orbit-db

mola 4y ago

There's an axiom in discussions here where Twitter needs saving. Why? In what way is it non successful? In what way is it broken? I mean most Twitter discussions I ever saw are disgusting or plain dumb mascarading as profound. I don't think the medium of a public square like that is a good thing, and I would be happy to see its demise. But it seems successful in the way it usually lead the public discourse similarly to how newspapers did. So what's exactly wrong with Twitter from that perspective? It seems very successful.

weeblewobble 4y ago
I think there's two answers to this question. For Musk, the answer is pretty clearly that he thinks Twitter is poorly run as a business and has no respect or confidence in their management. He thinks he can change the company to make more money. For all the VC types he's texting with, Twitter is broken because it bans people, and because (they believe) those bans are biased against conservatives. The ban (actually a suspension) of the Babylon Bee twitter account for a satirical article naming a specific individual transwoman "man of the year" seems to have been a radicalizing moment among the tech oligarchy
- mola 4y ago
  I didn't see a coherent claim by musk about the business side of Twitter. What are his qualms? He shitposts all the time, he sends his masses of fan boys to pile on adversaries. These are exactly the type of things that makes Twitter a cesspool. I guess expecting integrity and coherence from ppl who are the new royalty is anachronistic on my part. It's all about power and influence. The rest is just show.
philliphaydon 4y ago
> In what way is it broken? My biggest issue with Twitter is the lack of moderation, theres SO much propaganda on there. I report tweets where someone threatens someone and they are like 'oh no violation'... I reported a tweet with a video of ukraine where they showed un-blured body parts of dead people and a message praising russian soldiers for 'smashing nazis into little pieces'... and it was 'no violation' (thankfully this was removed when I reported it a second time) And Twitter is banned in China, yet the number of accounts which have location set to China, you shouldn't even be able to select China and there should be no state run media accounts.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

yalogin 4y ago

I am sure Dorsey understands he can’t put the cat back in bag even if he really wanted to. Twitter is a company and a company platform whether he likes it or not. More so it’s been a company for 16yrs now, so I wouldn’t put any ounce of credence to this dialogue other than a founder ruing his mistakes. It just served to seed the idea in Musk’s brain to buy it.

jmull 4y ago

This seems like double-talk to me. The talk is about decentralization, but also bakes in the idea it will be done exactly to their specification. Nonsense, of course. Not to mention mastodon already exists.

once_inc 4y ago
As Satoshi Nakamoto noted: "The nature of Bitcoin is such that once version 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime." I can imagine Dorsey wants to strive for the same thing: build a protocol in such a way that it becomes very difficult to change key aspects of the system.

gonehome 4y ago

Reading these it makes me wonder if they know about Urbit - it’s so much of what Jack wants that I’m really curious if he just doesn’t know about it.

ajkjk 4y ago
Well urbit is kind of, like, a joke, right?
- gonehome 4y ago
  It's a serious project: https://zalberico.com/essay/2022/09/28/tlon-urbit-computing-freedom.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2022/09/28/tlon-urbit-computing-... There's a lot of weird marketing, but it's a real thing.
  - ajkjk 4y ago
    I'm amuse to find that https://urbit.org/ https://urbit.org/ is a lot more legit-looking than it used to be. Good for them. Is it still based on 'Hoon' and 'Nock' though? Because inventing your own nonsense programming language is antithetical to a serious attempt at building something.
    - gonehome 4y ago
      Except for the times it’s not. C was invented at some point too. Nock and Hoon serve a purpose and exist for a reason.
      - ajkjk 4y ago
        In principal there might be a time where it's necessary. In practice Nock and Hoon aren't it and are a joke.
        gonehome 4y ago
        You clearly have some sort of axe to grind so I’ll leave it here.

elil17 4y ago

You can see in the other Tweets posted by that account that he acknowledges that he knows Twitter has fake users prior to making a private offer. Although the fake users thing was never and is not a valid legal reason to void the contract. However, it's incredible to see that he didn't have the foresight not text about the fact that he knew this ahead of time.

happyopossum 4y ago
You're either deliberately ignoring facts to retcon this, or have not paid much attention to this at all. The question has never been "are there bots?"; it has been "did Twitter mislead me/the public about how many?".
- weeblewobble 4y ago
  But he says he wants to take the company private because if they fix their bot estimates it will tank the stock price. Which implies he "knew" the bot estimates were wrong (to the extent they were, which seems dubious based on available evidence) or in other words he was not misled

Helmut10001 4y ago

Jack, are you speaking of the Matrix Protocol? [1] [1]: https://spec.matrix.org/ https://spec.matrix.org/ [2]: https://matrix.org/foundation/ https://matrix.org/foundation/

Arathorn 4y ago
We showed Matrix to Jack and Parag last year - https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/18/introducing-cerulean/ https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/18/introducing-cerulean/ was the demo. I think Jack might have been wanting with more BTC tho(?)
- Helmut10001 4y ago
  Nice! I love the matrix cerulean demo! So unfortunate that the Cerulean threading PR seems to have been declined by the community. [1] [1]: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/2836 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/283...

seydor 4y ago

Let's unironically place our hopes for a decentralized internet on billionaires I found the other set of texts between Elon and Parag was even funnier.

qprofyeh 4y ago

It's so obvious that Musk was not really interested. The social balance was totally non-existent in this conversation. Musk's one line replies sound so generic. Seems like he wanted to keep the door open but Dorsey hadn't convinced him really yet. "I'd like to help if I can" is such a without obligation sentence. Then Jack replies with another well-designed text.

epinephrinios 4y ago
Generally I might agree but not in this instance. This is typical Elon Musk communication style.
stardenburden 4y ago
It certainly seems this way. But something must've changed later on, otherwise Musk wouldn't have tried to buy Twitter.
towaway15463 4y ago
Have you listened to Elon speak? He’s not exactly gifted when it comes to conversational skills. His texts read pretty typical for someone more interested in working out details than wasting time on small talk.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dontreact 4y ago
I agree. My read on this set of texts is Musk trying to get Dorsey on his side to help with the acquisition.

jejeyyy77 4y ago

crypto has no use cases amirite??

wallaBBB 4y ago

From another Musk's conversation [1], if you ever wondered how you reach high management positions - hard work: Musk: Please send me anyone who actually writes good software Steve Jurvetson: Ok, no management good coders, got it. Musk: Yes Musk: Twitter is a software company (or should be) Jurvetson: Yes. My son at Reddit and some other young people come to mind. Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson texts to recommend former Uber exec, Emil Michael, for the Twitter CEO job. When Musk says he’s looking for people who can code, Jurvetson volunteers his son. [1] https://bigtechnology.substack.com/p/elon-musks-text-exchanges-show-twitter https://bigtechnology.substack.com/p/elon-musks-text-exchang...

ivoras 4y ago

I know they are talking about new sexy distributed / federated stuff, but we actually had what they were talking about a long long time ago, and it was distributed in a very similar way - orgs, corps and just plain people used to run NNTP and IRC servers as they pleased, and cooperated with each other as they wanted. Glad to see good ideas don't die, they just get reinvented.

heeen2 4y ago
see also matrix/element, xmpp, jabber and probably many more

ladyattis 4y ago

I'm not surprised by this. Isn't it the case that most founders usually get pushed out within a matter of a few years when a company finally finds its footing in the market? It doesn't seem to be all that common to see a founder stick around unless they've done everything they can to ensure they have the controlling stake in the company they created.

tayo42 4y ago

I don't get the point obsessive need for more Twitter, or the need for a protocol. Honestly I think the world needs less connectivity, with more thought going into communication We already have the internet where anyone can go an put something up for people to see

aliqot 4y ago
>I think the world needs less connectivity Enthusiastic yes here on that one. Internet was a great thing but its ubiquity outpaced our maturity to use it responsibly.
- drstewart 4y ago
  The irony of posting these kind of takes on a highly popular internet message board.
  - tayo42 4y ago
    Could also mean I'm well experienced with highly connected communication and it'd downsides Also message boards aren't the same as Twitter

tiffanyh 4y ago

It sounds that Jack is aligned with Fred Wilson's thinking and what Fred has been advocating for years. Fred Wilson was an early investor and Board member at Twitter. https://twitter.com/fredwilson/status/1204800971211063296 https://twitter.com/fredwilson/status/1204800971211063296

prhrb 4y ago

Literally what mastodon and activitypub is

intrasight 4y ago

> doing something new that's decentralized It exists and it's called the Internet ;) As far as a new open protocol, again there are already organizations that manage such things.

memish 4y ago

Some other noteworthy texts. Musk: I interface way better with engineers who are able to do hardcore programming than with program manager / MBA types of people Agrawal: In our next convo- treat me like an engineer instead of CEO and lets see where we get to. - Musk: I basically following your advice! Dorsey: I know and I appreciate you. This is the right and only path. I’ll continue to do whatever it takes to make it work. - Marc Benioff: Happy to talk about it if this is interesting: Twitter conversational OS- the townsquare for your digital life Musk: Well I down own it yet - Satya Nadella: Thx for the chat. Will stay in touch. And will for sure follow-up on Teams feedback! - Musk: Please send me anyone who actually writes good software Steve Jurvetson: Ok, no management good coders, got it.

gambler 4y ago
Crazy conspiracy theories, eh? People running those companies routinely talk to one another. When it seems they act together, it's often because they actually do act together.

pmayrgundter 4y ago

Someone tell Jack and Elon that matrix.org could use their support. Sounds just like what they're talking about. Someone tell Matthew and Amandine at Matrix that it does actually need Write-All support. The only bit lacking.

Arathorn 4y ago
We showed Matrix to Jack via https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/18/introducing-cerulean/ https://matrix.org/blog/2020/12/18/introducing-cerulean/ last year. We’re still hoping he may revisit it :)
- pmayrgundter 4y ago
  Neat! I signed up and replied to thread on the announcement.. https://cerulean.matrix.org/@freality:dendrite.matrix.org/!o3r2XygCOPz3cWID:dendrite.matrix.org/$x4ELfukoSrkVmSCsUZtr2h-FbbCf85A0sDOGzlMjrMA https://cerulean.matrix.org/@freality:dendrite.matrix.org/!o...
  - Arathorn 4y ago
    yay - it still works :) Unfortunately I think it may have suffered from NIH syndrome.

kornhole 4y ago

I know both of these guys use signal.org. Such correspondence could not end up in public record unless one of them chose to make it public. Then comes the question of why they chose to make this correspondence public.

advisedwang 4y ago
If they have disappearing messages turned off and get a subpoena they are obliged to turn over those messages. I suspect, but I'm less sure, that if they have disappearing messages turned on but get a subpoena before the messages are actually deleted, then they are obliged to save them before they are deleted and turn them over.

stazz1 4y ago

Really interesting that Dorsey unironically says "governments" instead of "government" and expects us to believe that Twitter has not been aiding and abetting foreign assets after that whistleblower testimony came to light in Congress

lordgilman 4y ago
California is a government too, separate from the federal government of the United States, and it hasn't been shy about regulating tech companies. I don't think this jump to foreign governments is substantiated.

ashayh 4y ago

"Critical for humanity": https://twitter.com/kateconger/status/1575589049573601280/photo/1 https://twitter.com/kateconger/status/1575589049573601280/ph... What a joke.

diag 4y ago
Sounds like he's just trying to speak Elon's language to me.

MacroChip 4y ago

Interesting that Jack keeps the tracking code on Twitter shared links

cuttysnark 4y ago
Very interesting. I noticed that too, in part because I always remove it from the Twitter links I copy; even though I'm not entirely sure what/how it tracks, I know enough to know it's not needed to load the tweet in question.

ir77 4y ago

two white rich guys talking about a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. dorsey should be extremely happy that twitter even took off and not lament how he is going to start a new company to fix it. if this was his principle he should have reached out to people like musk to begin with and not drive twitter to motization, etc.

seer-zig 4y ago
What does their race have to do with the discussion?