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The Internet Twitter

Jack Dorsey Regrets His Role in Corporations Centralizing Discovery and Identity (twitter.com) 72

Posted by EditorDavid from the looking-back dept.
Twitter co-founder/former CEO Jack Dorsey made a remarkable statement Saturday on Twitter. "The days of Usenet, IRC, the web...even email (with PGP)...were amazing.

"Centralizing discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet.

"I realize I'm partially to blame, and regret it." Within two hours, his statement had been retweeted or quote-tweeted 4,700 times — while his original tweet drew 22,900 likes (and attracted over 2,000 comments). But it's not clear why 45-year-old Dorsey is reflecting nostalgically on 1990s-era bullletin board and chat technologies.

The only thing in the news today about Jack Dorsey is a small blurb from The Information linking to a larger (paywalled) article titled "Jack Dorsey, Marc Andreessen and the Makings of a Crypto Holy War" The war of words, blocks, and memes between Jack Dorsey and Marc Andreessen wasn't only fascinating because of the billionaire egos at play. They really did seem to be grappling with an important question: Is there a superior economic system waiting to be rolled out, and if so, who should control it...? [T]he debate was an important one, with roots in both men's pasts and hints of a continuing war between Dorsey's Bitcoin maximalists and Andreessen's "crypto polyamorists."
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Jack Dorsey Regrets His Role in Corporations Centralizing Discovery and Identity More

Jack Dorsey Regrets His Role in Corporations Centralizing Discovery and Identity

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  • Back in those days you could say anything and do anything. It would go up on IRC, usenet, etc, and it was pretty easy for anybody to find it too. There weren't any corporate executives you could threaten, and everything was nearly untraceable, depending on whether the gateway you connected to would log your IP, share it openly, etc. Progressives couldn't take down shit or cancel anything.

    Nowadays if you want to censor something, anything, there are only a few platforms to target, as opposed to basically eve

    • Progressives couldn't take down shit or cancel anything.

      Neither could anyone else. As a result, Usenet became a cesspool of spam.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Progressives couldn't take down shit or cancel anything.

        Neither could anyone else. As a result, Usenet became a cesspool of spam.

        Today is any different? Social Media is a cesspool of spam too. Only difference now is, it's sponsored.

        Sure, that turd is all shiny and polished, just for you. Oddly, this means no one is supposed to notice it's still a turd, and it reeks of shit in here.

    • Re:This is what progressives asked for though (Score:5, Informative)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Saturday April 02, 2022 @07:09PM (#62411924)

      You must have really forgotten about moderated IRC channels and invite only channels. Piss off the admin and get your subnet banned.

      Conservatives practically invented cancel culture. See The Dixie Chicks circa 2003 when they were against the Iraq war. Their music disappeared from radio stations overnight.

      • They are "The Chicks" now due to preemptive self-canceling since they promote their brand to progressives who hate everything about the south.

      • Conservatives practically invented cancel culture. See The Dixie Chicks circa 2003 when they were against the Iraq war.

        I'd go back further than that. E.g. out of town before sundown.

      • The Dixie chicks were never cancelled. They pissed off their fans, so nobody went to their concerts or bought their music after that. Nonetheless they kept their record deals the entire time, and even won Grammy awards. They're still active to this day, and never really stopped, they just don't make as much as they used to.

      • I think the point is that it kind of depends on who's in control of the culture. In the 80s and 90s, it feels like conservatives had a bit more of that power. But that's shifted today. I remember free speech being much more important to the left back in those times (though not 100%, I remember the quest to regulate video games being a bipartisan effort). But today, talking about free speech is a good way to get labeled alt-right, hilariously enough. There's something very, very wrong with that.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • you could leave FTP servers wide open on the internet with no password and root access to the entire filesystem for an entire year and nobody would touch them

        Erm, a lot of my activity in the mid-90s would disagree. You'd find yourself hosting a warez site in short order, if you had any bandwidth to speak of.

    • Back in those days you could say anything and do anything. It would go up on IRC, usenet, etc, and it was pretty easy for anybody to find it too.

      Most people were and wanted to be anonymous on these networks. And your teacher, your boss and your mom were not on IRC. Today, ton of people want to be famous and all your IRL social network is online. It is more about people, not technology I think.

  • I do NOT want to (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Saturday April 02, 2022 @05:17PM (#62411694)
    listen to any more billionaire or media figures wax nostalgiac about how the past was better while they sorta, kinda, maybe if you strain to listen, admit that they played a role in crapping things up and creating a whole new host of problems.

    You made your pile of cash, you knew EXACTLY what you were doing, you understood EXACTLY who you were steamrolling, and you did it anyway because you WANTED THE $$$. Dont apologize after the fact and expect anyone to think your suddenly softer, kinder and gentler. You want to prove youre different now? Give your fortune away. Not just 10 percent. 99 percent. What? You wont do that? So surprised. I dont want to hear your worthless mea culpa. Youre rich, you steamrolled others to get there. Just be a man and fukkin own what you did.

    • Honestly, I'd prefer fuck and enjoy his money. The last thing we need is another billionaire tech monster trying to assuage a guilty conscience by 'helping'.

      • For the billionaires that actually follow through on the “give away 99%” pledge, I’m willing to cut them some slack. The rest are just normal, amoral (not immoral, theres an important difference) capitalists who wanted to get rich, and happened to be extremely successful, and astoundingly lucky. I dont hate them. Capitalism is the best economic system we’ve invented to date. But I dont want to hear them try and present themselves as anything other than cut-throat capitalists.

        • For the billionaires that actually follow through on the “give away 99%” pledge, I’m willing to cut them some slack. .

          "Give away 99%" is bullshit. Everyone who has said that is several times richer today than they were 10 years ago. They haven't given away shit.

          • They haven't given away shit.

            Yes, they have. Bill Gates is making a huge contribution to human welfare with his malaria project in Africa and many other projects. McKenzie Bezos has given away billions.

            It's not their fault that the tech boom has grown their wealth faster than they can disburse it.

    • Adding-

      You could take that big pile of cash and invest in new technologies to make the web more free NOW. You could advocate for better policies with your baby. Literally billions of thing you could do.

      That you aren't, but will give all the money back after you're done with it and your two bit whore- fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

  • If Dorsey doesn't stop the crypto crap soon, he'll regret that, too.

  • What's not clear? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lije Baley ( 88936 ) on Saturday April 02, 2022 @05:42PM (#62411736)

    "But it's not clear why 45-year-old Dorsey is reflecting nostalgically on 1990s-era bulletin board and chat technologies."

    Kind of obvious if you had been there...those were damn good times, and the future was so promising, until the trolls came to ruin it.

    • Trolls were there from the early days. "Flame wars" regularly happened as there wasn't any moderation. I recall a template where you could check off different insults as a response instead of having to type out an argument.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by waspleg ( 316038 )

        I don't think they meant the same kind of trolls that you do. I think they meant the soulless corporate profit whores trying to fill their bottomless need for relevance through material gain.

        • Actually, I meant the serious thieves and vandals who eventually took advantage of the situation. The forum trolls didn't bother me, and I might have participated in a bit of that "harmless" fun. The significant corporate problems followed much later.

    • "But it's not clear why 45-year-old Dorsey is reflecting nostalgically on 1990s-era bulletin board and chat technologies."

      Kind of obvious if you had been there...those were damn good times, and the future was so promising, until the trolls came to ruin it.

      In 1990 Dorsey was 13 years old. Perhaps the author meant to suggest that he was waxing nostalgic about an Internet era that he wasn't old enough to fully appreciate. I don't necessarily agree that Dorsey wasn't old enough, but I can certainly entertain the argument.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by waspleg ( 316038 )

        I'm slightly younger than he is and I grew up on Usenet, IRC, and BBS's. I had IBM give my class at school PS/2s when I was in 3rd grade and I was one of the only ones who figured out how to actually get it online where they were trying to give us homework because THIS WAS THE FUTURE! The idea being the parents would pay for the machines at the end - most didn't.

        I had an Apple clone machine prior to this, but this machine was magical to me and I remember fondly going to software swap meets in the school's

    • I miss the days where nobody knew I was a dog.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I think the point is that if he is 45 now he would have been 15 in 1992 when bulletin board systems were peaking.

      By the time he was 20, at university and getting really engaged in these issues, it was 1997 and the web and first dot-com bubble were in full swing.

      It's not impossible that he was using those systems at that time, I think the article is just saying that it would be easier to believe if he was 5-10 years older.

      • I'm the same age as Dorsey and I also grew up on that primitive internet, and before I got access to it (Ca. 1992 or so) I was on USENET and local BBSes. And I got involved in it before I ever attended an institution of higher education. There are opportunities for that kind of thing around college towns with early internet backgrounds.

  • It was not that amazing. I was there. 1000 replys to Whoa Win95 boots in 3 seconds. With every single reply saying how that was not possible and cross posted to every off topic group in existence. IRC wasn't much better. The same 10 people typing in l33t speak about how Ministry was great and everything mainstream sucks. RMS did used to come by and chat, that was cool.

  • Holy War is an apt figure of speech here. Two parties, believers of the same basic free market dogma, duking out the fine details that nobody else seems interested in.

  • I'm sure he's taken the time to weep into every last dollar of his $8B fortune.

    Anybody who COULDN'T see where it was going WOULD NOT BE where he is right now.

    And if he REALLY does, what's he going to do NOW to help remedy the situation?

    Jack has said a lot of shit over the years. Most of it absolute bullshit.

    So forgive me if I don't take ANYTHING he says seriously.

    • mod +1billion jack could easily use his power to restructure twitter and other social media back into the free speech platform it was from the start.

      why. doesn't. he. ?.

  • In other news (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MysteriousPreacher ( 702266 ) on Saturday April 02, 2022 @06:27PM (#62411832) Journal

    Man who beat his family to death with a hammer wonders if he could have done more to prevent their deaths?

  • This is not what he should be apologizing for.

  • How do we do decentralized discovery? Friends? How about business websites... maybe a hybrid of centralized and decentralized?

    • I've often thought the commerce aspects of the web should be decoupled from from the web at large (remember .biz and fuck Denis Leary). Keep that area a HEAVILY regulated sandbox for ads and data mining. You know what you are getting into going there.

      It appears for the rest, the darkweb is where the innovation is going to happen. Just sucks the prospects of jailtime for not knowing how to navigate it well.

    • neocities.org ? gemini project? I dunno. People should go back to making their own little web spaces.

  • If you regret it so much; DONATE ALL YOUR PROFITS TO SOMETHING TO FIX IT.

    He wont because he wants the double ego exposure.
  • Woz also regrets what he did https://youtu.be/LBrSnzPqeJY?t... [youtu.be]
  • It's a PR move to promote his Bitcoin interests. Billionaire's pursuing their own interests regardless of the consequences for everyone else, e.g. energy scarcity, climate degradation, & facilitating criminal activity on a massive global scale. Jack Dorsey can go f**k himself.
  • It is democracy at work. Both of these rent extracting parasites would not be able to control it. The employees should own the labor and billionaires should be stripped of their ill gotten extractions. democracyatwork.info

  • Any time there is a new frontier, whether it's technology or physical space, corporations will be started and grow, and their aim is always to harness that new frontier for commercial gain. Jack Dorsey may have been one of many entrepreneurs who participated in this, but it would have happened with or without him.

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