JAKARTA - Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is feeling guilty over Twitter's controversial content decisions created by the platform under his leadership, warning of content control by governments and companies.
Dorsey started the statement in a Twitter thread but moved it to a blog post. "I don't want to edit it all into 280 pieces of character," Dorsey said.
He wrote that initially he hoped to build a Twitter that was based on the principles he had learned through "his past actions as a co-founder of Twitter". But he gave up on pushing for those ideas after an activist bought Twitter shares in 2020.
"I was planning out at the time because I knew I was no longer suitable for the company," he wrote, quoted by Rolling Stones.
According to him, the principles he wants to achieve as a public company, such as social media resilience to company and government controls, user-controlled content, and moderation implemented by algorithmic options, are no longer there when he leads the company, or on Twitter at this time.
His statement later called the "File Twitter" series considered by Elon Musk, the new Twitter CEO, as an explanation of "the suppression of free speech."
Dorsey discussed the suspension of Trump's account, which had become one of the main topics, and admitted his guilt. "We did the right thing for the public company's business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society," he said.
"The biggest mistake I made was continuing to invest in making tools for us to manage public conversations, rather than creating tools for people who use Twitter to manage them themselves easily," he explained. This burdens the company with too much power, and opens us up to significant external pressures (such as advertising budgets)
However, despite the hypersphere surrounding Twitter files, the Twitter co-founder wrote that "there were no bad intentions or hidden agendas, and everyone acted according to the best information at the time."
Dorsey also discussed how transparency and moderation are key to improving social media platforms, and said he hoped the leak would be "issued in a Wikileaks style, with more eyes and interpretations to consider."
Following the release of the file, reports of attacks on former employees have now emerged, which are also addressed to Dorsey.
The current attack on my former colleagues could be dangerous and didn't solve anything. If you want to blame, direct me and my actions, or the shortcomings," he said.
Dorsey is concerned about potential solutions to the new Twitter under Elon Musk's leadership, and proposes a series of ranking and relevance algorithms, which users can create and choose to suit their needs (or not be used at all).
In a recent interview with Reuters, Ella Irwin, who was appointed the new head of Twitter trust and security, said Musk encouraged the company to rely more on automation and less on human reviews when making content moderation decisions.
Dorsey also announced that he would start funding Signal, which remains resilient to government control, amounting to $1 million a year. He stated that more grants would be issued.
I will open a new category of #startsmall grants: 'open internet development,' he said. This will start with focusing on giving cash and equity grants to engineering teams working on social media and personal communication protocols, bitcoin, and web-specific mobile OS.
He asked readers to send potential candidates, which shouldn't be too difficult because Matt Taibbi shared a co-founder email in running the first "File Twitter".
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