Speaker 1: Joining us now is blockhead Jack Dorsey. That's the title
Speaker 1: he himself requested, Jack, we really appreciate you joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you both. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely be grateful. Jack, you've been outspoken recently. Why
Speaker 1: do you think that RFK Junior is the best choice
Speaker 1: for the Democratic need and the best the Democratic nominee
Speaker 1: and the best candidate in the field right now?
Speaker 2: First and foremost, to have a candidate to be president
Speaker 2: of the United States that is focused on peace and
Speaker 2: ending all these wars and really focusing on looking at
Speaker 2: some of the deeper issues that we've we've had, especially
Speaker 2: as he states around regulatory capture, the military industrial complex.
Speaker 2: He is intimate knowledge of all these things. He's you know,
Speaker 2: worked extremely hard and tiresome in these fields and made
Speaker 2: a lot of progress. I you know, I came across
Speaker 2: him this year and I really listened, and I kind
Speaker 2: of went through all of his podcasts, almost every episode,
Speaker 2: and I appreciate how much of a grasp he has
Speaker 2: of all the issues he speaks to. I appreciate that
Speaker 2: he's curious, and I appreciate that he comes at everything
Speaker 2: from a more of a humanitarian angle. There's a deep,
Speaker 2: deep sense of humanity and actually helping people. And there's
Speaker 2: an edge as well, there's you know, no fear in
Speaker 2: exploring topics that are a little bit controversial and maybe
Speaker 2: in the future. So all in all, just absolutely refreshing
Speaker 2: from what I've seen from the whole field. Now. I'm
Speaker 2: not really usually in I don't, you know, really speak
Speaker 2: out much on who I'm choosing or why, But I
Speaker 2: don't know, I just feel like our country needs his leadership.
Speaker 3: And do you think it would be important for the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party to host primary debates so that voters have
Speaker 3: a chance to view all of these candidates and their alternatives.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it just it would be silly to not have
Speaker 2: open debates, to not have open primaries, because it feels
Speaker 2: like hiding or everything that is everything is planned and
Speaker 2: you know, already determined, and I don't think that builds trust.
Speaker 2: And right now we need to build as much trusts
Speaker 2: as possible, open up and be as transparent as possible,
Speaker 2: and really let the people see and decide for themselves, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Jack, you know, speaking of openness of transparency, so far,
Speaker 1: we haven't had a chance to really hear from you
Speaker 1: much in really the recent years, and especially the last
Speaker 1: several months. What do you make so far about Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's CEO takeover of Twitter, your former company.
Speaker 2: I think this is actually the first interview I've done
Speaker 2: since I left the company. Maybe maybe well. As I said,
Speaker 2: Twitter is going to have a very very hard time
Speaker 2: continuing to be a public company. It had many pressures
Speaker 2: upon it. The advertising business we were entirely dependent upon,
Speaker 2: and not just advertising as you might think of it
Speaker 2: from Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat. It was brand advertising.
Speaker 2: It was dependent upon huge brands or collection or conglomerates,
Speaker 2: brands seeing us as something that they wanted to spend
Speaker 2: money on. And because we were so small relative to
Speaker 2: our peers, if anything happened in the market or with them,
Speaker 2: they would instantly pull away from us. Snapchat was included
Speaker 2: in that bucket as well, and it would retreat to
Speaker 2: the larger ones like Facebook and Google. Because we were
Speaker 2: a public company without any protections, we had no dual
Speaker 2: class of voting set up. We were open to activists
Speaker 2: coming in. In fact, we had an activist coming into
Speaker 2: our stock. It's hugely distracting and really really challenging to
Speaker 2: build anything at all and to actually build something that
Speaker 2: you have to take some risk upon because you have
Speaker 2: the pressure from these advertisers and all this revenue suddenly
Speaker 2: going away if you make a decision they don't like.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, if that happens, then you
Speaker 2: know that the stock has an issue and activist comes
Speaker 2: in and it's a death spiral. So the only path
Speaker 2: to me was to take the company private. And I
Speaker 2: you know, Eli is our number one user, he's their
Speaker 2: number one customer. He understood the platform deeply, and he's
Speaker 2: a technologist and he builds technology. So at the very start,
Speaker 2: I was hoping for years that he would and I
Speaker 2: asked him many times to join our board at least,
Speaker 2: But when he decided to make a bid for the company,
Speaker 2: or join the board and then make a bid for
Speaker 2: the company, Uh I was it just it felt great.
Speaker 2: But as you all remember, that's the time when the
Speaker 2: market crash, especially for advertising companies like ours. So if
Speaker 2: we not get that, I think it would have been very,
Speaker 2: very challenging for Twitter to live, right. So, uh what
Speaker 2: happened unfortunately after that, after the bid made, the bid
Speaker 2: was made and the and the market went down, is
Speaker 2: you know, he went to back away. He did have
Speaker 2: an option to back away at a billion dollars and
Speaker 2: just walk away, but there was this fight about bots,
Speaker 2: and you know, the company took him to court when
Speaker 2: he when he backed out, and that's when things really
Speaker 2: went south. Fortunately, you know, he decided to make it.
Speaker 2: But I think it set up a kind of a
Speaker 2: dynamic where he had to be very hasty, he had
Speaker 2: to be impatient, he had to move as quickly as
Speaker 2: possible with features even if they weren't fully thought out.
Speaker 2: And it all looked fairly reckless. But I do have
Speaker 2: confidence that he'll figure it out. I do have confidence
Speaker 2: in his new CEO, and I own, you know, three
Speaker 2: percent of this of this new company, so I'm supportive.
Speaker 2: I have questions about, you know, certain things, and I
Speaker 2: have questions about the long term aspects of free speech
Speaker 2: on a corporate owned platform, no matter who the owner is. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but those are solvable.
Speaker 3: Speak speak to that piece first, specifically with regard to Elon,
Speaker 3: do you think he's lived up to his own free
Speaker 3: speech commitments on the platform? And then what do you
Speaker 3: see as the tensions between a free speech commitment and
Speaker 3: a for profit company.
Speaker 2: Well, it depends on where you want the free speech
Speaker 2: because we were more, you know, ideally going for a
Speaker 2: global appreciation of free speech and free expression itself. And
Speaker 2: Elon took on a principle of anything that's allowed by
Speaker 2: law on the platform, which sets up a dynamic where
Speaker 2: you have countries like India and Turkey who made many
Speaker 2: requests to us back in the day to take down
Speaker 2: particular journalist accounts or give contact information and remove them
Speaker 2: from the platform. So I think it's easier to do
Speaker 2: in the US. But at the same time, you are
Speaker 2: dependent right now upon an advertising model, and the advertisers
Speaker 2: can do things like boycott until policies are changed or
Speaker 2: actions are taken. And we saw that many many like well,
Speaker 2: almost every year I was at the company, we saw that.
Speaker 2: So my one goal before I left the company was
Speaker 2: to shift away from this dependency on brand advertising and
Speaker 2: move to different lines of revenue. And Elan has started
Speaker 2: with that, and I think that will help the cause
Speaker 2: of being a platform for truly free speech. But that said,
Speaker 2: he can always be compelled. He has one person, He's
Speaker 2: one single point of failure, and pressure can be put
Speaker 2: upon him by the United States, by the Department of Defense,
Speaker 2: by China, by Turkey, by India, of course, and it
Speaker 2: will and this is this is going to be the
Speaker 2: reality for any centrally controlled company or or even a
Speaker 2: protocol that's that's centrally controlled. So the only way to
Speaker 2: truly have free speech, to truly be censorship resistant, is
Speaker 2: to work on open protocols. And there are only two
Speaker 2: at scale that I'm aware of, which is Bitcoin for
Speaker 2: money and noster for social media and beyond. But they're
Speaker 2: so niche right now, and there's so it's all and
Speaker 2: to me, it just it just says at the moment
Speaker 2: that people don't actually care as much about the censorship resistance,
Speaker 2: otherwise they would be using these technologies more. And maybe
Speaker 2: there's not much of a need just yet or and
Speaker 2: certainly the accessibility and the approachability of these systems is
Speaker 2: rather ocine for all people in the world, but that
Speaker 2: will that will change. So I think we'll see how
Speaker 2: important censorship resistance truly is to people. You know, when
Speaker 2: some of these issues come up in the future, and
Speaker 2: it's no fault of Elon, no fault of anyone at
Speaker 2: the top of one of these companies, it's just impossible
Speaker 2: to avoid not having to take actions when there's a
Speaker 2: particular entity, be to a government or your customer's requesting
Speaker 2: that you do something or they leave right, Jack.
Speaker 1: One of the things that a lot of people focused
Speaker 1: on the Twitter files, do you think that that accurately
Speaker 1: reflected decision makings, what that's was taking place, you know
Speaker 1: at the company around so many of these sensitive topics,
Speaker 1: and what's your reflection on that you know? Since their release, I.
Speaker 2: Wish that the full corpus of the emails and all
Speaker 2: the information was released so that more journalists and everyone
Speaker 2: in the world could see everything, because I think there
Speaker 2: is some context missing when you when you take parts,
Speaker 2: and it's no fault of the reporters. Necessarily, they had
Speaker 2: a tool and they had to ask questions of the tool,
Speaker 2: and that tool would give them back fragments of information
Speaker 2: and that might lead them to get the other fragment
Speaker 2: to provide more context. But if if everything was available,
Speaker 2: I think we'd have a better picture. I think the company,
Speaker 2: you know, my leadership set on the company wishes to
Speaker 2: trust our folks and that they were doing the right things.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of stuff in the Twitter files that
Speaker 2: you know, I never saw because it wasn't at that level,
Speaker 2: and I was surprised by the level of engagement with
Speaker 2: government agencies. I was surprised by the request. But if
Speaker 2: you look at that, our people are our team members,
Speaker 2: like they pushed back on a lot of that stuff,
Speaker 2: not all of it, but a lot of it was
Speaker 2: was questionable. So I think it shows a company that
Speaker 2: is struggling. You know it. It remains the most important
Speaker 2: public square in the world right now, and it was
Speaker 2: so challenging to work in that environment. We're onder, we
Speaker 2: are under our microscope from day one of the company,
Speaker 2: and it creates stresses that are just unbelievable. But I
Speaker 2: think I think they acted with fairness. I think they
Speaker 2: generally did the right thing. Of course, we made a
Speaker 2: bunch of mistakes, especially around the New York Post and
Speaker 2: the Hunter Biden laptop story. But I believe that people
Speaker 2: and that they were doing the best they could with
Speaker 2: the information that they had, and I wish in retrospect
Speaker 2: I was a little bit more hands on than that.
Speaker 2: My focus was on like when when I came into
Speaker 2: the company, we were losing users, and now my focus
Speaker 2: was just to grow the company again, grow the usage
Speaker 2: base for the revenue, and we did. We actually became
Speaker 2: a profitable company. We got onto the S and P
Speaker 2: five hundred, we had, you know, five million dollars a
Speaker 2: year in advertising revenue, and we were shifting away from
Speaker 2: advertising at the same time and growing. So I didn't
Speaker 2: focus on that area as much as I probably should
Speaker 2: have in retrospect and asked more questions. It was all
Speaker 2: reactive when I did. But yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 2: tough situation, but I think I think the company did well,
Speaker 2: but certainly we could have done better, and I do
Speaker 2: believe that we were more fair and more introspective than our.
Speaker 3: Peers in terms of context. You said you felt that
Speaker 3: some of the context was missing. Do you have specifics
Speaker 3: there of things that you wish were included that you
Speaker 3: felt painted in this leading portrait?
Speaker 2: Nothing in particular that comes to mind. I mean, it
Speaker 2: just it's hard to there's just so much context in
Speaker 2: those emails and the communications, and even within that we
Speaker 2: would have in person meetings that would discuss things that
Speaker 2: may not be represented in the written communication. So there's
Speaker 2: nothing that stands out. But I believe, like if you
Speaker 2: truly want to show how one of these systems work,
Speaker 2: which I'm fully supportive of, opening all this stuff up.
Speaker 2: We were trying to like figure out how to do
Speaker 2: that ourselves before I left. And one of my goals
Speaker 2: is to be the most transparent company in the world.
Speaker 2: But to only give access to a few people with
Speaker 2: a tool that you know takes these franks, I think
Speaker 2: that there could have been a better approach, and that
Speaker 2: would just be open up the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Jack.
Speaker 1: One of the things, you're in a unique position. You
Speaker 1: believe in free speech. That's something I've never doubted about you.
Speaker 1: You also are in the unique position of having run
Speaker 1: one of these companies. Can you give us some anecdotes,
Speaker 1: as you alluded to foreign governments and the pressures that
Speaker 1: you were under, if able, just to give the audience
Speaker 1: an idea of what it is really like to be
Speaker 1: in a position to have some of the most powerful
Speaker 1: people literally on Earth coming to you and saying demanding
Speaker 1: things of your company, and as someone with principles, how
Speaker 1: did you navigate.
Speaker 2: That India, for example, India is a country that had
Speaker 2: many requests of us around the Farmer's protest, around particular
Speaker 2: journalists that were critical of the government, and it manifested
Speaker 2: in ways such as we will shut Twitter down in India,
Speaker 2: which is a very large market for US. We will
Speaker 2: raid the homes of your employees, which they did. We
Speaker 2: will shut down your offices if you don't follows through.
Speaker 2: And this is India, a democratic country. Turkey is is
Speaker 2: very similar like we. We had so many requests from Turkey.
Speaker 2: We fought Turkey in their in their courts and often won,
Speaker 2: but they threatened to shut us down constantly. Nigeria yet
Speaker 2: another one. I don't think we could even put people
Speaker 2: on the ground because of what the government might do
Speaker 2: to our employees if we had them there. And then
Speaker 2: of course the the U S. We we started a
Speaker 2: long time AGOO transparency report about all government requests into
Speaker 2: US and we're continuing to make it more fine grain.
Speaker 2: And these were requests of takedowns or investigations or any
Speaker 2: any number of things that a government would request of us,
Speaker 2: especially the US government. And I would, I would. I
Speaker 2: wasn't as deep in those conversations, but I would say that.
Speaker 4: It it was just, it was it was super It
Speaker 4: feels super challenging because you have the US government asking
Speaker 4: you things, and then when asking you to do things,
Speaker 4: and then also calling you to Congress.
Speaker 2: And I was, I was. I testified before Congress four
Speaker 2: times for you know, five to seven hours each time
Speaker 2: with the most non productive discussion. You know, these frame
Speaker 2: questions of you guys are now the uh with you know,
Speaker 2: with the ability to provide no context but soever, so
Speaker 2: that the Congress people and the Senators could actually understand
Speaker 2: and again have context for the problems we're trying to solve,
Speaker 2: and and use it as a form for ideas too,
Speaker 2: you know, to do this together for the people of
Speaker 2: the United States and for the people of these other countries.
Speaker 2: But it just felt like attacks all the time from
Speaker 2: re angle. Everything we did really upset the right, and
Speaker 2: everything we did really upset the left. Like you could
Speaker 2: not there's no way to win, and you just kind
Speaker 2: of have to internalize that and move forward.
Speaker 3: You referred earlier to the fact that there hasn't been
Speaker 3: a large adoption of some of the Twitter alternatives, and
Speaker 3: you said that calls into question how much people actually
Speaker 3: care about these questions of censorship. I viewed a little
Speaker 3: bit differently, which is that it seems to me that
Speaker 3: these platforms are kind of like the definition of a
Speaker 3: natural monopoly.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: The reason people are staying on Twitter is because people
Speaker 3: are on Twitter, right, there's already this critical mass of
Speaker 3: individuals there. So given the fact that, first of all,
Speaker 3: I would be curious if you agree with that assessment
Speaker 3: that they're sort of natural monopoly is because the value
Speaker 3: comes in having the sizeable social network. Should they be
Speaker 3: regulated then warlike public utilities, which is the other sort
Speaker 3: of famous example of a natural monopoly.
Speaker 2: I think natural monopolies happened for a time, but they're
Speaker 2: easily disrupted. I don't think it's as challenging as as
Speaker 2: one would think. I mean, Twitter has only been around
Speaker 2: for seventeen years, which which seems like a long time,
Speaker 2: But there was a you know, a MySpace before that,
Speaker 2: and a friends Are before that, and a Usenet before that,
Speaker 2: which was completely decentralized and unknown by anyone. I don't
Speaker 2: I don't think more government regulation is necessarily the right
Speaker 2: answer to ward off the monopoly aspects or fix some
Speaker 2: of the issues. I think having a having an open
Speaker 2: protocol that no one actually owns and governments and corporations
Speaker 2: can't bend to their will is the most important thing
Speaker 2: that allows for the most creative solutions solve the problems
Speaker 2: we see, including protecting freedom of speech and including providing
Speaker 2: safety for folks who who want it. And my hope
Speaker 2: is that you know, as we build these technologies like
Speaker 2: Noster and Bitcoin, that a company like Twitter adopts them
Speaker 2: because it removes a bunch of the liability they would
Speaker 2: have otherwise, and they can build phenomenal businesses on top
Speaker 2: of it. And to prove that, you see what Google
Speaker 2: has done with the Web. They used an open protocol,
Speaker 2: built a phenomenal business. They built a phenomenal business on Gmail,
Speaker 2: which is an open protocol for email. There are real
Speaker 2: opportunities building on open protocols where we're at the same
Speaker 2: time the foundational aspect of it, the foundational layer that
Speaker 2: people own and a company can't bend towards its will
Speaker 2: one way or the other.
Speaker 1: Jack, what do you think about AI regulation? You're a technologist.
Speaker 1: Do you think we should have regulation? Do you agree
Speaker 1: with Elon and others who want to shut it down
Speaker 1: in the meantime to regulate it? It gets to some
Speaker 1: of the protocol discussion you're talking about right now.
Speaker 2: I don't believe pausing AI is realistic. We may pause
Speaker 2: it here in the US, but they're not going to
Speaker 2: pauseit it in China. And I think there is a
Speaker 2: bit of an arms race in this space. I think
Speaker 2: regulation is needed. I don't think the the regulators currently
Speaker 2: have an understanding of the approach. I'm hoping that they
Speaker 2: look more at the primitives of these technologies and and
Speaker 2: not focused on driving particular outcomes of the technologies. And
Speaker 2: I think the real the most important thing to me
Speaker 2: is that we have open source models. And I'm you know,
Speaker 2: I've I've critiques Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg for uh most
Speaker 2: of my career, and he does. But I really respect
Speaker 2: the fact that he chose to open source his large
Speaker 2: language model and that it created this entire open source ecosystem,
Speaker 2: building models that are now approaching the level of a
Speaker 2: chat cheep and what Google is doing with part I
Speaker 2: think that is absolutely critical that we all have access
Speaker 2: through these technologies and people can build on top of
Speaker 2: it and we can actually see how they work. So
Speaker 2: I think that's far more important than regulation. There's some
Speaker 2: dangers there that people might take these technologies and build
Speaker 2: extremely harmful things, but that's been the case forever in
Speaker 2: open source, and we just haven't seen that play out
Speaker 2: because there is a balancing effect of people doing the
Speaker 2: right thing and looking at ways to protect the overall
Speaker 2: technology and ultimately protect community. So I think that the
Speaker 2: open source aspect has me the most excited about this.
Speaker 3: You have a lot of respected technologists who have been
Speaker 3: sounding the alarm about the potential dire impact of AI
Speaker 3: technology on society. Do you share any of those concerns?
Speaker 2: Of course I share them. I think there's a lot
Speaker 2: of hype in the AAR right now. The technology industry
Speaker 2: is very trendy, and we move from one fashion to
Speaker 2: the next fashion. And just six months ago, now nine
Speaker 2: months ago, we're only talking about crypto and bard apes.
Speaker 2: Now all that away and we're talking about AI and
Speaker 2: how it's going to destroy us. Like if you listen
Speaker 2: to the earnings calls of all these companies six months ago,
Speaker 2: there was no mention of AI, and now every single
Speaker 2: earnings call of all almost all public companies includes a
Speaker 2: mention of AI. And some of that I think is,
Speaker 2: you know, to pump the stock a bit. Some of
Speaker 2: the all the dire stuff is it makes for a
Speaker 2: good headline, which sells advertising and helps the media immensely.
Speaker 2: I don't think we're anywhere near the danger point, but
Speaker 2: certainly like it is important for us to consider the
Speaker 2: you know the potential harmful outcomes and have conversations about them.
Speaker 2: But I think the only way to do that is
Speaker 2: to really build it in the technology. And that's why
Speaker 2: I think open sources is so critical.
Speaker 1: Jack, what do you make of metas you know, foray
Speaker 1: into the headsets. We just had the release of the
Speaker 1: Apple headset, this type of technological advancement. What do you
Speaker 1: think about ar VR and the current push by these
Speaker 1: companies into it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's obvious that it's going to happen. Like
Speaker 2: if you if you want to understand the future of
Speaker 2: any technology, just read science fiction. There they're actually the
Speaker 2: roadmap writers, and it's obvious that like snow Crash, this
Speaker 2: book from Neil Stevenson, is going to happen better one
Speaker 2: like now that we've seen it in a movie, like
Speaker 2: people want to build it, and I think they they've
Speaker 2: you know, propensity to be phenomenal for for gaming. I
Speaker 2: think it's an obvious user interface evolution. I'm super worried
Speaker 2: and concerned with how out of touch it might make
Speaker 2: people and how it just even further. I think another
Speaker 2: movie Wally by Pixel, that's the future we're driving towards
Speaker 2: with everyone in the floating chairs, you know, drinking their
Speaker 2: food out of straws, and you know, constant twenty four
Speaker 2: to seven entertainment, And you can see that like the
Speaker 2: whole world is headed this way. And I want to
Speaker 2: believe that there's a different answer. So I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm I'm it's going to happen. I'm skeptical about some
Speaker 2: of the benefits, and I hope we have an honest
Speaker 2: conversation about some of the harms around more and more
Speaker 2: social distancing.
Speaker 3: I think there's been a huge increase both in research
Speaker 3: about harms of too much technology, especially on young children
Speaker 3: and teenagers. I think there's been huge interest from the
Speaker 3: public in how do we make sure that we still
Speaker 3: have you know, health that we're touching grass, so to speak.
Speaker 3: And I wonder Jack, how you think about those things,
Speaker 3: you know, advice to parents, advice to people individually, how
Speaker 3: to sort of stay staying, stay connected, stay you know,
Speaker 3: living a fulsome and satisfying and thriving life. As more
Speaker 3: and more technology invades the most intimate of our personal interactions.
Speaker 2: I do think it's important to find some sort of balance.
Speaker 2: Like I think with all technologies when they first come out,
Speaker 2: we tend to overuse them and abuse them, and then
Speaker 2: we realize that we're doing that, and we look for,
Speaker 2: you know, opportunities to move away from them. I do
Speaker 2: think the phone is a real addiction. I do think
Speaker 2: this generation of kids. I don't have kids myself, but
Speaker 2: just talking with my friends who are parents, a lot
Speaker 2: of them have made the choice to not allow any media,
Speaker 2: TV or devices. Some have made decisions to allow everything
Speaker 2: because they're growing up in this world and they need
Speaker 2: to understand how to work with it, and others have
Speaker 2: found some sort of hybrid. I think if you if
Speaker 2: if we see it in a as a as a
Speaker 2: tool to help us ask questions about the world, to
Speaker 2: build things, to make things, and not just pure consumption,
Speaker 2: I think it can be quite healthy as long as
Speaker 2: you are finding balance elsewhere. And I am very worried
Speaker 2: that there's not a lot of emphsis on finding that
Speaker 2: balance outside the moment, and we've been so dependent. You
Speaker 2: go to any restaurant these days and you have you
Speaker 2: see couples all the time, both of them are on
Speaker 2: their phones and the candle is in the middle of them,
Speaker 2: and it's just we've definitely lost a lot of that
Speaker 2: opportunity for real connection, and I do think we should
Speaker 2: build technologies to suggest that people look.
Speaker 1: Up, look up. That's an inspiring message, Jack. I know
Speaker 1: that you're a busy man. We just want to say
Speaker 1: we appreciate you joining us so much. It's it was
Speaker 1: a real pleasure to talking to you, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people are going to get something out
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Jack. Great to talk to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: It's our pleasure.