Jack Dorsey says his biggest regret is Twitter became a company | Hacker News Reader

Jack Dorsey says his biggest regret is Twitter became a company

reuters.com

58 pointsjeremylevy73 comments

I am sure Jack had enough opportunity & authority in his tenure to vouch for some kind of open standard so that Mastodon, Nitter etc could co-operate on this framework & data was transparent and accountable (instead of the API throttling on several directions). Lamenting now & shadow blaming others (as well as lending support for Musk in taking over) when he has let go of the company entirely is a strawman argument.

If Jack was a powerful and effective leader none of this would’ve happened. He doesn’t seem that incredible to me - just someone who made Twitter, doesn’t mean he’s a genius.

At least being a genius in one area doesn’t imply being a genius in all.

This is true for so many successful tech leaders but there’s a lot of reasons many parties don’t want to believe it’s more luck than talent.

But you get the Notches and Zuckerbergs who strike gold once then utterly fail on every subsequent attempt at striking gold again.

Notch is a strange case. He was on track for a possible second hit, but then the pressure of doing it as someone with a ton of attention already focused on his every move was too much for him and he bailed out. To my knowledge, he never tried again.

Dorsey has struck gold twice, of course. Block (formerly Square) has done quite well. Twitter has floundered in various ways, but it's still be a huge success in other ways.

I feel like there's got to be a great deal going on at Twitter that never makes the public news. Some sort of giant behind the scenes power struggle. Maybe one day we'll get the full story.

He did made a research team at Twitter for distributed protocols, "Project Bluesky". Looks like it spinned of Twitter as a Public Benefit LLC in the early months of 2022.

https://blueskyweb.xyz

I can't seem to join the Matrix room linked. Can anyone?

One major difference between twitter and mastodon is that mastodon doesn't show you popular things you didn't ask for. It doesn't try to show you stuff that you'll maybe think is interesting.

Mastodon is just more or less showing you what you wanted. And it is not addictive this way. It can't fuel mass viral trends and conversations. It has none of the twitter dynamics. I'm not saying that's bad, but I think it means it will never be mass market popular. It's like email vs tiktok, email can't compete with tiktok's sweet features.

> It can't fuel mass viral trends and conversations.

How can it? Don't you have to join individual servers? If so it is by design that you can't observe or interact with anything outside of your little bubble.

You can speak with anyone on any federated server, you don't have to hop servers on mastodon. The instances are the providers, but they participate in a big network (except the ones that are banned - i.e each instance can choose which edges in the graph it should use.)

Original twitter was also like this. As was Facebook, etc.

They got their original user base without any of this. And then used that foundation as the basis for a giant advertising machine by rolling out "the algorithm."

I think it's possible to get quite large by just offering a decent reinvented "BBS" service. It's just likely not possible... to make money.

I don’t think the problem is money. I think it’s losing users to people who roll out the algorithm.

Both twitter and FB were wildly unprofitable until they made this kind of "algorithmic" shift and that shift happened in order to court the ads revenue firehose.

Having worked in ad-tech some years ago, it's just... the temptation is too strong. Your whole business becomes "enhancing engagement" and all sorts of sophistry gets involved in presenting a Zuckerberg-like case about how this is "improving the world" by "making things better for users" and "connecting people" [with products or other people or whatever]. The firehose seems infinite, and it lets you grow grow grow.

Even Apple, which resisted this for years and kept itself as a "consumer products" and "media" company has now fallen prey to this and is trying to divert some part of the ad-revenue stream to itself.

Once you do that, it's paperclips paperclips paperclips

I guess if this is true then it's more than "it's too tempting". Meta is a huuuuge business today and it wouldn't have been without being profitable. I don't think they really provided much value besides facebook (I think instagram and whatsapp are great apps, but they're replaceable), but now they definitely are with their entry in VR/AR. The Quest 2 is really something, and I can't wait to see what they'll build in the AR space.

Mastodon community is improving discovery features but algorithmic manipulation of feeds seems to be off limits. Maybe a user controlled feed algorithm would be accepted.

True but hindsight is 20/20 and i imagine its tough to see how things would play out in the “fog of war”.

Pointing the finger at others is definitely not the way to go though.

I find it hard to view his statement as being delivered in good faith. Twitter pioneered some of the viral social mechanisms that are now mainstream and they continue to make decisions that clearly prioritize virality over health such as allowing quote retweets even when a user has disabled their replies to prevent harassment. Dorsey deserves just as much responsibility as Zuck for the rise of populism in the US. He gets more respect only because Facebook is used by boomers, and the cultural elite are on Twitter.

Twitter is a publicly traded company, which means it can be sued by shareholders if it makes business decisions which will harm its value. Giving up complete control of its protocol would harm its value. Giving up its algorithm which traps its users in a whirlwind of vitriol would harm its value, because its advertising dollars would go down. Dorsey might have been at the helm, he might have a lot of clout, but when it comes to making the internet or the world better in return for lower profits, most of the time the company leadership does not actually have the control we think they do.

The problem isn't that Twitter is a company, the problem is that they went public. Any promise or good will intention a corporation has ever had is null and void the day they sell the company or go public. I'm sure Dorsey will cry into piles of money over it.

That's all true and many still don't care. He should have fought back. I'm sure he had plenty of cards up his sleeve but cowardly kept cashing in checks and did nothing.

These are crocodile tears. He wipes them away with his millions of dollars

Other large regrets he has:

- becoming a multi-billionaire

- dating models

- having the clout to determine the course of the culture

- seeing how long a goatee he can grow without risk neck injury

Dorsey owns a few hundred million dollars of Twitter stock. He's a mukti-billionaire because he started Block (Square and CashApp)

He started Block because he started Twitter

https://black-mirror.fandom.com/wiki/Smithereens

As much as it sounds good, there is no way a "Twitter protocol" would have had the impact as Twitter as a company pushing its product. There are a dozen great protocols posted on HN each month.

Based on its origin story, the statement "Twitter should be a protocol" is either willful misrepresentation on his part or the loudest "woosh" noise passing over Jack's head that he's ever heard.

If I recall correctly, wasn't there some sort struggle within the company between those who wanted Twitter as a product and those who wanted it as a platform, and the product people won. Followed shortly by shutting down of third party Twitter clients.

To me Twitter as a platform was easier to steer towards a protocol

Any links? Would be interesting to read.

Oh look I can criticize after cashing out

If only he could have done anything at all about it. It’s just so sad that even now he has no capability of having any impact at all on this situation. So tragic.

I'll gladly take possession of his money if he'd like to start fresh with another scrappy startup.

Imagine if Twitter had been run like Square.

Square helped normalize e-commerce by using AI to thwart fraud and verify authenticity.

Twitter used AI to create an algorithmic hate machine, disseminating lies, outrage, and fear.

#91 – Jack Dorsey: Square, Cryptocurrency, and Artificial Intelligence https://lexfridman.com/jack-dorsey/

Dorsey's regrets about APIs indicates he still doesn't understand the harm Twitter (and others) have done.

Commerce is already inherently collaborative and as Deirdre McCloskey puts it, fosters certain virtues. I think Square always had less potential to go in a dark direction.

All free, easily accessible publishing platforms of considerable size, without exception, will always disseminate lies, outrage, fear, along with clickbait, scams, and general garbage content by the hundreds of millions of posts.

There isn't a single example that hasn't turned out that way in the history of the Internet and there never will be. There's a reason for it: human nature hasn't changed in the past decades, and those items sell (garner attention) and always will quite predictably.

The sole means of stopping that is to have a highly controlled platform that restricts who gets to say what, quite aggressively, through hiring many thousands of moderators with intentional bias to a particular worldview.

Sure.

The prior implementations of the hate machines didn't benefit from recommenders and individual behaviour profiling.

As silly (quaint) as the efforts now seem, FCC licensees had to serve the public interest, popular culture had ratings, we had the Fairness Doctrine, the medias weren't yet dominated by monoplies, yadda, yadda. Now, there are no checks, no counter balances.

All I'm saying is that Zuck, Dorsey, Page & Brin, and so many others, are moral cripples, oblivious to the harm they've enabled. They're not even malicious, like Murdock or Sinclair, which somehow makes it more sad.

Hot take: "But boy was it worth it for all of this cash!" - Dorsey

It is, in the world where cash > everything else in life.

I'd rather be happy with $100 million than being burnt out with $10 billion. YMMV.

Having burned out spectacularly, I’d take $10 billion and retire.

Then again, people who make $10B aren’t likely to be people who are happy not working. :)

People who make $10B "work" a few hours every day, at best.

You sure about that - pretty sure that wealth and asset control is all encompassing.

But yeah they aren't contributing on an IC level at a company if you mean “work” as in sitting at a desk physically writing stuff.

Hope you are post burnout and recovering ok.

As someone that has burned out spectacularly, if you can still carry on to get a bigger paycheck at the end, sorry to say, it's not burnout. You're just fed up.

Signed: someone that said no to a big paycheck because I was so mentally dead it would have cost my physical health. I'm still recovering a year later.

He gave 1/3 of his stake back to Twitter's employees.

And recently gave away 28% of his net worth, pledging $1b of his Square stake - "to fund a combination of Covid-19 relief efforts, universal basic income and support for girls’ health and education."

Your overly bitter hot take doesn't jive with reality very well in your suggestion that Dorsey particularly celebrates being wealthy.

There's nothing special about his billoinare's playbook though. After you sacrifice any and all morals & ethics to capture enough resources for a 1,000,000 lifetimes you set aside 1,000 lifetimes and use the rest to buy back your soul.

The Giving Pledge https://givingpledge.org/about

> The Giving Pledge is a movement of philanthropists who commit to give the majority of their wealth to charitable causes, either during their lifetimes or in their wills.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge

I could write myself a letter about my in-this-lifetime philanthropic intent too.

(Edit) Philanthtopy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philanthropy

- "Save", "Spend", and "Give" jars/envelopes

- Open Source, Open Access

- Open APIs, Open Standards; https://webmonetization.org

I've never understood this argument that to be a billionaire, it's required to destroy man peoples lives. There are plenty of people who got rich just selling their company. Hell, Notch (who is a piece of shit, but didn't have to be) became a billionaire by selling a video game. No murdering slaves required.

If someone steals $X and gives 0.5*$X to charity, it's hard to see it as virtuous, even though it's preferable to giving $0 to charity.

Getting rich off social media isn't literal theft, of course, but they've put such huge costs onto society which is paid for by us, so it is metaphorically similar. It's like a wealthy contract killer who donates half of his net worth ... Alright, but you made your money by extracting value from others.

It’s always weird that we talk about the negative affects of SM but never the positives. For me personally SM has been a big positive in terms of meme culture , finding and joining communities , and learning about topics I never would have in any other case. Am I alone in this ?

But morally you can't impose unreasonably large costs on person A in order to give to person B. There are a lot of benefits to the customers of contract killers, but we don't allow it for good reasons.

How is selling ads "stealing"?

If 50% of the users are bot followers bought by PACs from foreign countries - who are gluing posters to the walls, enraging actual customers, and ordering free waters - how much time do the regulars want to spend there?

Figure out a way to charge the PACs for the spammy vitriol that they bought and smeared all over Biz, Evan, Noah, and Jack's.

The metaphorical theft is from the people who have had uncompensated costs imposed on them, such as the people that were killed in Myanmar after their killers organized on Facebook.

Are weapon (gun, knife,) designers, manufacturers, distributors, or sellers liable for how killers use their product to cruelly or unusually harm persons denied Due Process of Law?

What sorts of mandatory and charitable investments could reduce such harms, due to which parties' positive or negative actions?

Is the telephone utility liable?

They are partially responsible. They are not liable because the law doesn't currently enforce that responsibility. Law != moral responsibility.

Responsible in the same way that a grocery store is responsible for selling a tomato that was thrown?

Title II Common Carrier, government-granted monopolies

ISP: Internet Service Provider

Section 230

Information Service Provider

Business of Public Accommodation

You can't make them serve a gay cake to a gay wedding.

You don't need a public guest list for a private party at a private golf club.

You can't make them let problem gamblers in (at the now-at-least-federally-legal and now-online) casino.

Per the bench

Obviously there's a spectrum of responsibility, with some companies bearing more and others less. The grocery store is a poor analogy though because they're not actively facilitating tomatoes being thrown. If they incentivized tomatoes being thrown through social mechanics then I would place more blame on their shoulders.

Also you're talking about current law here. I'm not interested in the current state of affairs. I understand Twitter and Facebook aren't breaking the law if they facilitate organization of a genocide. I'm talking about what should be the case. Perhaps laws need to be updated.

It would be an "overly bitter hot take" if he wasn't still worth billions after giving all of that money away.

oh comeon jack, there are many 'protocols' to share anything in any way you like, someone needs to do the work to bring the people on the platform. that s what twitter does and only a company can do that. other than that i dont think you regret the $$$

Just curious: what company did that work for HTTP?

netscape

...and MS and Google and Apple. A protocol is harder to get off the ground and it's arguably much harder/not possible at any arbitrary point in history, but when it does work, it's much more powerful than what any single company can achieve.

MS was afraid of the web. Apple ... not sure what they did during early days (or even now) to popularize the web. Google started in 1997

Not Apple per se, but NeXT was pretty important in the development of the early web as I understand it. The first web browser / editor (WorldWideWeb) ran on their platform.

that barely counts. by that logic, the electricity provider of TBL also gets some credit. In reality, only CERN does deserve some credit

There's a parallel universe where Microsoft used their monopoly muscle, legal department, and influence over the W3C to crush the Web 2.0 we know. Maybe we still get AJAX and all that followed without XMLHttpRequest, but there's no guarantee it would have been as free and open as it was.

MS was so afraid of the web that IE achieved (by fair means or foul) 95% usage share between 1995 and 2003[0]. Be sure to check out the webs growth over that period. While the companies I listed may not be "cool" what they did, whether they liked it or not, is bring use of the http protocol to the mainstream. The point is that the protocol dictated the field they all had to compete on. Which is why Google has invested significant resources to dominate the protocol, but it's taken them a very long time.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer

I remember Twitter being pitched originally as aspiring to be a messaging protocol. That's why the 140 character limit was in place: 140 character message + 20 character username = the 160 character SMS limit; the lowest common denominator. A protocol probably was his original vision for the product, and it didn't turn out that way. As many in this thread have cynically pointed out, he did make a lot of money on Twitter as a company. Still, I can imagine having some regret over pivoting away from the original idea.

I seem to remember in the early, halcyon days of Twitter they had quite an open set of APIs (not the same as a protocol, granted.) A rich ecosystem of all kinds of interesting tools and products grew around Twitter, enriching and contributing greatly to Twitter's success.

Then, once they well and truly had critical mass, they closed it off and pulled the ladder up behind them. Very idealistic.

I don't understand this. For twitter to be what it is today a lot of centralized decisions needed to be made. I don't know how birthing it as a protocol and evolving it turns it into anything like current Twitter. And if he means Twitter should be a protocol _and different_ from it's current incarnation. Just go make that different thing?

https://archive.ph/73Eg1

Something else would have. The money was on the table.

Yea, mine too

> Jack Dorsey says his biggest regret is Twitter became a company

I think everyone can tell that he's not into it from the fact that the company hasn't innovated in a decade.

hhahahahahaha i honestly take mark z opinions more seriously ; the best you can say about jack and still be within the norms here is that he is very disingenuous

Reply on news.ycombinator.com