Is the Former Founder of Twitter an Elitist A-Hole or a Victim of Circumstance?

Last month Jack Dorsey, the co-creator of Twitter, left BlueSky, which was basically the same as old Twitter.  In an interview he complained about the platform "making the same mistakes" like not being free or an open development platform and moderating comments and stuff. 

The original interview was on some tech site that you and I have never heard of.  But soon it was picked up by more well-known outlets like Business Insider and people were talking about it on Bluesky, especially the part where he describes people who went from Twitter to Bluesky after Musk's takeover as "a common crowd."

The reaction was pretty negative.  "What an asshole!" people said.  "He wants 'open Internet' to protect Nazis and trolls, etc."  And people post their snide comments and write thinkpieces.  Even I wrote a blog entry I'll share later.

But then days later I read this article from a guy who sorta knows Dorsey and was present for a lot of the interviews for hiring people of Bluesky and stuff like that.  So someone who probably knows what he's talking about.

If you can keep your eyelids open at all the tech jargon, what you start to understand is a lot of what Dorsey said was taken out of context.  Especially stuff like "open Internet" and "common crowd."  And then you know how these things go:  one person misinterprets something and tells someone else who tells someone else and it spreads like a disease.

All the jargon in the article aside, I think what happened is Dorsey was talking to some tech reporter from a tech site and so they were basically just talking shop.  Thus he wasn't parsing this for mass consumption.  Or you could say, dumbing it down for people like me and most Phantom Readers.  Like if a doctor is talking to someone from a medical journal they're probably going to use more medical terminology and such than if they're talking to someone from a local newspaper.

The problem in this case is then people who aren't all that tech savvy get a hold of it and see a rich white guy complaining about the "common crowd" and "free speech" and naturally their reaction is going to be, "What an elitist asshole!"  Because those people--including me--wouldn't know a "protocol" from a Bulgarian dildo.  Actually "protocol" just makes me think of C-3PO in Star Wars.

If you actually know what it is then it makes a little more sense.  I think basically what he's wanting is for everyone to sort of curate their own experience by having their own set of algorithms to filter things instead of relying on human moderators, which is different than a completely lawless, unmoderated Internet.  And the "common crowd" probably just meant people who are not tech savvy.

But the problem, as I'm sure many writers are aware of, is it's easy for people to misinterpret things.  Once people do, especially with someone fairly high profile, then it can be hard to correct.  And I'm willing to bet Dorsey isn't doing himself any favors on X right now.  He probably just needs to hire someone who can explain what he actually meant in plain English--or close to it.

Anyway, you can read what I originally wrote, which is now probably out of context, but still I think it's a good point about the need for some moderation--at least until someone figures out all this "protocol" bullshit.

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Last month Jack Dorsey, the co-creator of Twitter, left BlueSky, which was basically the same as old Twitter.  In an interview he whined about the platform "making the same mistakes" like not being free or an open development platform and moderating comments and stuff.  So then he crawled back to Twitter, aka X, to join in whining about "free speech" with fellow rich non-genius troll Elon Musk.

People want to make this an argument and obviously Dorsey and Musk want to think this is a real complicated issue, but it's not.  It's a pretty open-and-shut case.  And a real fucking hard no when it comes to social media platforms being "open" with no moderation.

To boil it all down simply you could ask Dorsey and Musk:  how many security guards/bodyguards do you employ for yourself, your family, your buildings, your megayachts, etc.?  How many of your homes are protected by gates?  What kind of security systems do your homes, cars, megayachts use?

If you care so much about "openness" then why do you protect all your stuff?  Because common sense (and a glance at any newspaper or local news broadcast) would tell you that there are bad people out there who would take your shit if they thought you didn't have any protection.  I mean if word got around that Dorsey's mansion didn't have any gates or locks or security alarms, how long do you think it'd take someone to drop by and empty the place out?  Basically as long as it'd take to get a truck there.

Yet for some reason, Dorsey and Musk and others want us to think the Internet is a better, more wholesome place.  Despite that it's very obviously not.  A short film I find amusing on the Rifftrax site is called The Kid's Guide to the Internet.  It was made in 1997 and is super cheesy.  It's funny to see all the old sites but also sad to remember all our hopes for the Internet.  "I can research stuff for school!"  "I can find out what's going on with my favorite TV shows/movies!"  "I can email the president!"  And 27 years later we have disinformation, spam, scams, trolls, incels, hate, and porn instead.  But even this silly movie 27 years ago warned the kids that they should only go to sites their parents approved.  Why?  Because even on a stupid movie like that they knew there were bad people on the Internet.  It was definitely not the sort of place you'd want your kids to have open access to then and certainly not now.

The simple fact is, as I've been witness to, when you have a universe with no physical consequences for your actions, people will tend to be their worst selves.  I've said before, I've been in flame wars since 1996 on the Transformers Usenet group.  I'd say I didn't intentionally start any of those--but I tried to finish them.  So I know what I'm talking about.  

Think of these groups--or now social media platforms--like a bar.  If you went into a real bar and started arguing, you risk getting punched, kicked, hit/stabbed with a bottle, or even shot.  But on the Internet you don't run any of those risks.  So you get a lot of "keyboard warriors" who have a lot more courage than they do in real life (looking at me here!) to fight with people.  Because what's going to happen to them if there's no moderation?  You going to call the FBI?  Oooh, I'm soooo scared.

Really from about 2006-2015 there was rarely any moderation on Writers.net.  Guess what would happen?  You'd have flame wars that would last for weeks.  Or sometimes it'd burn for a few days and then cool a little and then some jackass would start things up again.  Point being, with no moderators to give people a time out, it could drag out for a long time.  And usually it'd evolve from whatever the starting topic is to something else and something else and probably a lot of personal attacks and stuff.  In the end what would happen?  Everyone would just go to their corners to wait for the next round.  And so it'd go.  Some people enjoy that and sometimes it could be fun but eventually even I got fairly tired of it.  It was no surprise the site lost a lot of users to basically become a ghost town.  I mean, who really wants to keep being around all that drama and stuff?  

Even Dorsey noted that after the Musk takeover of Twitter a lot of people began going to Bluesky.  Why?  Because they didn't want to deal with the drama.  They just wanted to make their posts and shit and not worry about trolls, pervs, racists, incels, scammers, spammers, and the rest of the freak show Musk wanted to bring back.

Which brings up the point:  most people don't want "open" Internet.  Granted they don't want things too heavily moderated, but they don't want no moderation either.  Again, if you think of a social media app like a bar, moderators are like the bouncers to eject those who get out of line.  Do you really want to go to a bar where anyone can do whatever they want?  It's like the club in Roadhouse before Patrick Swayze/Jake Gyllenhaal gets there.   And for some people that's fun, but for most people it's not much fun and thus they aren't going to stay very long.  So you end up with a clientele of scumbags and jerks.  And I guess still some hangers-on who don't want to lose the following they still have.

Anyway, I think it's a pretty easy issue.  Moderation exists because people will naturally be assholes if there's no one to keep them in check.  That's true in real life and in online life too--especially in online life.  You have to wonder if Dorsey and Musk are so stupid that they can't see this or they just want permission to be the biggest trolls they can be.  I'm leaning towards the latter.