8 ms·

Jack Dorsey: “Elon is the singular solution I trust” (2022)

44 points by davidbarker 4y ago

mikeryan 4y ago
Yeah I could see how he thought that at the time - or, at least, wanted to send Elon off with wind in his sails. …but this was not correct.
- RandineTaylor 4y ago
  [dead]
- AceJohnny2 4y ago
  I don't even think he believed it. This just seems like CEO-speak, to reassure people or drive a vision. Lol.
  - atleastoptimal 4y ago
    This is why I don't get why people hold the elite to their word like normal non-99.99% people. People get to elite level status because their words and kaleidoscope of apparent intentions, beliefs and character are optimized to move themselves upwards. They don't need to be engineers, designers, particularly good product people or even fun to work with. All they need is to be among the best playing the great game at the highest level. It's no different than the way politicians or gang leaders operate.
    - neilv 4y ago
      > or gang leaders Any of us is only one successful knife fight dance number away from being a billionaire?
fundad 4y ago
This says a lot about his judgement.
- threatofrain 4y ago
  Jack Dorsey's judgment is to say one thing about Elon and then launch a direct competitor.
  - jiggawatts 4y ago
    Imitation is the greatest form of flattery.
- Aperocky 4y ago
  Yes. He trust Elon to deliver $44B to him and other shareholders. Trust deserved in the end.
  - fundad 4y ago
    The exit of all exits.
p0pcult 4y ago
This didnt age well.
- Mike_12345 4y ago
  It aged perfectly well and the results have confirmed Jack was right. Elon has done an excellent job there.
duxup 4y ago
It’s not like he has a choice as far as that statement goes or that Jack would say he doesn’t trust Elon at that point… I don’t know what we’re supposed to think of these kinds of statements, or what these people getting a ton of money to make a complement expect us to believe. I once ran into an executive and I was tired from working the night shift and then going to an all hands meeting. He asked me what I thought of the meeting and I was honest that I really don’t care what they say at those meetings because if it wasn’t “a great time to work here” they wouldn’t tell me at that meeting. To the executive’s credit he said “Yeah that’s true.”.
quelsolaar 4y ago
Unpopular opinion: I think twitter as a platform is noticable better now, longer tweets, better media quality, a reverse cronological timeline that sticks, less adds, verification accessible to more people and the beginnings of transparency around the algorithm. What is worse, is the users. The Elon hate overshadows any rational discussion of the platform. Twitter IMO was at a local maximum and needed shaking up, and with time more and more improvements will come.
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
  It's also noticeably faster now. Even though I don't like Elon cause he punches down, Twitter really was just languishing there and is much better now.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  I think you are right in some ways. The site didn't crash and burn like everyone was predicting. It's still snappy, and has more features now. What gets me is the never ending stream of childish decisions, stuff like replacing the logo with Dogecoin, messing up the blue tick, banning linking certain major domains, and other stuff.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > The site didn’t crash and burn like everyone was predicting. “Everyone” wasn’t predicting that. A large number of people were predicting a high probability (but not necessarily immediate or catastrophic effect) of service degradation from the mass of knowledge that was jettisoned – and this has manifested and continues to – and some people who saw that criticism and didn’t understand it relayed it as immediate immediate demise, which hasn’t.
  - jonny_eh 4y ago
    I recommend visiting reddit.com/r/twitter to see the number of people who can't log into their account for various BS reasons and can't reach anyone for support.
saurik 4y ago
So let's say you wanted to get to a decentralized alternative to Twitter--which Jack Dorsey would claim to have wanted for a long time--but you had this giant impediment: Twitter exists, and it just isn't that bad... like, it isn't great, and maybe it is barely even good, but it is just totally reasonable enough that a lot of people use it, and so you can't really even enter that market because people are all insisting that Twitter is fine and your decentralized thing is a bit too awkward or a bit too confusing or whatever. Now, one thing you could do is what I have spent some time doing: try to point out that a centralized business is broken by its very nature, and go on about wasting your life trying to educate people that we all should not trust such systems because, at the end of the day, even if you absolutely love the people behind such a product, one day people you do not like will buy it and kill it off. Despite collecting a ton of examples--if you are old enough to remember the LiveJournal era, did you pay attention to when it finally got sold to a Russian company, for example?--the reality is that even people who go see such a talk and agree go off and tweet about it on Twitter (and like, having given that talk, you know where I would tell people about it? well, I was forced to do so on Twitter a lot; I avoid what I can, but I have to go where people are or I am alone in the woods.) https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms So, with Twitter as it existed being a losing situation, you have two hopes: 1) that a new person can come in and fix it, by dismantling what made it so valuable to shareholders... but like, are they really going to do that? probably not; but I mean... maybe they could? If someone was going to do that, I guess I was willing to believe that Elon might do it for some weird reason? I dunno. I actually had at least some hope that it might go in this direction... but even if he did, I still wouldn't have been happy until "I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company". But like, Twitter as a company before was not OK to anyone who believes in decentralization, which this tweet claims very strongly to do; so you have to remember that and then ask if there was any solution you think had even more of a chance than Elon to pull that off, and frankly I just don't see it: I don't see any way to go from what Twitter was to what Twitter should be... which is gone... oh... right ;P. And hence we get to the other hope to fix Twitter: 2) you just buy it and kill it. Now, there are other ways to do this: we could beg Yahoo to buy it--they have an amazing track record for this purpose--but they aren't really in a position to do that anymore; Google buying it would almost certainly kill it, but I imagine they don't see a reason to, as they can always just build their own products to kill :(. So, we are stuck with Twitter until someone else comes in to buy it and kill it... but like, the risk is that they come in and then just run it without either fixing it or breaking it... that would suck! What we want is someone who will somehow either dismantle Twitter and make it a free and open platform protocol or, if they fail to, for whatever reason--including malice or greed!!--that the result will die the swiftest possible death imaginable, as remember: we absolutely need to get rid of Twitter to replace it with something decentralized. And, you know what? This went great for Jack. A ton of people have left Twitter, more people are hating it every day, the narrative has finally turned into one of Twitter as a centralized scourge, and Jack is thereby getting to re-do Twitter: he has launched Blue Sky, and people actually care now in a way they simply did not years ago. (And like, if you believe his vision, and not his ego, a ton of people on Mastadon is also amazing!) > In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. So, OK: let's go with that. > Solving for the problem of it being a company however... I am loving how vague this is. > ...Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness. Well, wow: mission accomplished (lol). Honestly, I feel like this might go down as one of the most ironically accurate assessments ever made (whether or not Jack understood any of this going in).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
vlunkr 4y ago
The way he talks about Twitter is wild. A couple of tweets earlier he said this: > I love Twitter. Twitter is the closest thing we have to a global consciousness.
- trilbyglens 4y ago
  The guy sounds like an empty headed naive bafoon.
xiphias2 4y ago
Jack is super active in the Nostr community (just wrote a minute ago): https://rbr.bio/npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m https://rbr.bio/npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjs... The emphasis for him is here at this point (which was the start of the tweet): ,,In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter'' The title was editorialized
11thEarlOfMar 4y ago
What has Jack learned about Twitter that he didn't know before Elon bought it?
DemocracyFTW2 4y ago
> I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness Jeez. Well this aged badly.
trilbyglens 4y ago
I feel like jack is an idiot tbh.
skyzyx 4y ago
This didn’t age well

44 points by davidbarker 4y ago

Yeah I could see how he thought that at the time - or, at least, wanted to send Elon off with wind in his sails. …but this was not correct.

RandineTaylor 4y ago
[dead]
AceJohnny2 4y ago
I don't even think he believed it. This just seems like CEO-speak, to reassure people or drive a vision. Lol.
- atleastoptimal 4y ago
  This is why I don't get why people hold the elite to their word like normal non-99.99% people. People get to elite level status because their words and kaleidoscope of apparent intentions, beliefs and character are optimized to move themselves upwards. They don't need to be engineers, designers, particularly good product people or even fun to work with. All they need is to be among the best playing the great game at the highest level. It's no different than the way politicians or gang leaders operate.
  - neilv 4y ago
    > or gang leaders Any of us is only one successful knife fight dance number away from being a billionaire?

fundad 4y ago

This says a lot about his judgement.

threatofrain 4y ago
Jack Dorsey's judgment is to say one thing about Elon and then launch a direct competitor.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  Imitation is the greatest form of flattery.
Aperocky 4y ago
Yes. He trust Elon to deliver $44B to him and other shareholders. Trust deserved in the end.
- fundad 4y ago
  The exit of all exits.

p0pcult 4y ago

This didnt age well.

Mike_12345 4y ago
It aged perfectly well and the results have confirmed Jack was right. Elon has done an excellent job there.

duxup 4y ago

It’s not like he has a choice as far as that statement goes or that Jack would say he doesn’t trust Elon at that point… I don’t know what we’re supposed to think of these kinds of statements, or what these people getting a ton of money to make a complement expect us to believe. I once ran into an executive and I was tired from working the night shift and then going to an all hands meeting. He asked me what I thought of the meeting and I was honest that I really don’t care what they say at those meetings because if it wasn’t “a great time to work here” they wouldn’t tell me at that meeting. To the executive’s credit he said “Yeah that’s true.”.

quelsolaar 4y ago

Unpopular opinion: I think twitter as a platform is noticable better now, longer tweets, better media quality, a reverse cronological timeline that sticks, less adds, verification accessible to more people and the beginnings of transparency around the algorithm. What is worse, is the users. The Elon hate overshadows any rational discussion of the platform. Twitter IMO was at a local maximum and needed shaking up, and with time more and more improvements will come.

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
It's also noticeably faster now. Even though I don't like Elon cause he punches down, Twitter really was just languishing there and is much better now.
Gigachad 4y ago
I think you are right in some ways. The site didn't crash and burn like everyone was predicting. It's still snappy, and has more features now. What gets me is the never ending stream of childish decisions, stuff like replacing the logo with Dogecoin, messing up the blue tick, banning linking certain major domains, and other stuff.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > The site didn’t crash and burn like everyone was predicting. “Everyone” wasn’t predicting that. A large number of people were predicting a high probability (but not necessarily immediate or catastrophic effect) of service degradation from the mass of knowledge that was jettisoned – and this has manifested and continues to – and some people who saw that criticism and didn’t understand it relayed it as immediate immediate demise, which hasn’t.
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  I recommend visiting reddit.com/r/twitter to see the number of people who can't log into their account for various BS reasons and can't reach anyone for support.

saurik 4y ago

So let's say you wanted to get to a decentralized alternative to Twitter--which Jack Dorsey would claim to have wanted for a long time--but you had this giant impediment: Twitter exists, and it just isn't that bad... like, it isn't great, and maybe it is barely even good, but it is just totally reasonable enough that a lot of people use it, and so you can't really even enter that market because people are all insisting that Twitter is fine and your decentralized thing is a bit too awkward or a bit too confusing or whatever. Now, one thing you could do is what I have spent some time doing: try to point out that a centralized business is broken by its very nature, and go on about wasting your life trying to educate people that we all should not trust such systems because, at the end of the day, even if you absolutely love the people behind such a product, one day people you do not like will buy it and kill it off. Despite collecting a ton of examples--if you are old enough to remember the LiveJournal era, did you pay attention to when it finally got sold to a Russian company, for example?--the reality is that even people who go see such a talk and agree go off and tweet about it on Twitter (and like, having given that talk, you know where I would tell people about it? well, I was forced to do so on Twitter a lot; I avoid what I can, but I have to go where people are or I am alone in the woods.) https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms So, with Twitter as it existed being a losing situation, you have two hopes: 1) that a new person can come in and fix it, by dismantling what made it so valuable to shareholders... but like, are they really going to do that? probably not; but I mean... maybe they could? If someone was going to do that, I guess I was willing to believe that Elon might do it for some weird reason? I dunno. I actually had at least some hope that it might go in this direction... but even if he did, I still wouldn't have been happy until "I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company". But like, Twitter as a company before was not OK to anyone who believes in decentralization, which this tweet claims very strongly to do; so you have to remember that and then ask if there was any solution you think had even more of a chance than Elon to pull that off, and frankly I just don't see it: I don't see any way to go from what Twitter was to what Twitter should be... which is gone... oh... right ;P. And hence we get to the other hope to fix Twitter: 2) you just buy it and kill it. Now, there are other ways to do this: we could beg Yahoo to buy it--they have an amazing track record for this purpose--but they aren't really in a position to do that anymore; Google buying it would almost certainly kill it, but I imagine they don't see a reason to, as they can always just build their own products to kill :(. So, we are stuck with Twitter until someone else comes in to buy it and kill it... but like, the risk is that they come in and then just run it without either fixing it or breaking it... that would suck! What we want is someone who will somehow either dismantle Twitter and make it a free and open platform protocol or, if they fail to, for whatever reason--including malice or greed!!--that the result will die the swiftest possible death imaginable, as remember: we absolutely need to get rid of Twitter to replace it with something decentralized. And, you know what? This went great for Jack. A ton of people have left Twitter, more people are hating it every day, the narrative has finally turned into one of Twitter as a centralized scourge, and Jack is thereby getting to re-do Twitter: he has launched Blue Sky, and people actually care now in a way they simply did not years ago. (And like, if you believe his vision, and not his ego, a ton of people on Mastadon is also amazing!) > In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. So, OK: let's go with that. > Solving for the problem of it being a company however... I am loving how vague this is. > ...Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness. Well, wow: mission accomplished (lol). Honestly, I feel like this might go down as one of the most ironically accurate assessments ever made (whether or not Jack understood any of this going in).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

vlunkr 4y ago

The way he talks about Twitter is wild. A couple of tweets earlier he said this: > I love Twitter. Twitter is the closest thing we have to a global consciousness.

trilbyglens 4y ago
The guy sounds like an empty headed naive bafoon.

xiphias2 4y ago

Jack is super active in the Nostr community (just wrote a minute ago): https://rbr.bio/npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m https://rbr.bio/npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjs... The emphasis for him is here at this point (which was the start of the tweet): ,,In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter'' The title was editorialized

11thEarlOfMar 4y ago

What has Jack learned about Twitter that he didn't know before Elon bought it?

DemocracyFTW2 4y ago

> I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness Jeez. Well this aged badly.

trilbyglens 4y ago

I feel like jack is an idiot tbh.

skyzyx 4y ago

This didn’t age well