Block Inc CEO Jack Dorsey Proposes Decentralized ‘Twitter’

Lavina Daryanani
Source: Bloomberg

Ever since the collapse of the centralized crypto exchange FTX, people from the space have been looking for alternatives. As a result, decentralization has now become more relevant than ever. Activity on DEXes has seen a substantial improvement of late, with people wanting to have control over their own crypto.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has now taken the conversation a step further. In a recent post, Dorsey batted for a decentralized alternative to Twitter. The former executive of the social media platform underlined Twitter’s censorship issues and then went on to talk about the importance of a “free and open protocol” for social media.

Chalking out the principles he believed in, Dorsey first emphasized that social media must be “resilient to corporate and government control.” He stressed that only the original author should only have control to remove content they produce. Dorsey further opined that content takedowns and suspensions should not be possible.

Also Read: Elon Musk Reinstates Several Suspended Twitter Accounts

Dorsey then highlighted that moderation was best implemented by algorithmic choice. He asserted that he did not believe that a centralized system could do content moderation globally. Per him, it could only be done via ranking and relevance algorithms, that too, the more localized, the better.

Also Read: Jack Dorsey Urges Elon Musk to Drop All Filters and Release Twitter Files Publicly

Dorsey Talks About His “Biggest Mistake”

Neither the Twitter led by Dorsey nor the Twitter of today led by Elon Musk adhere to the said principles. Pointing fingers toward himself, Dorsey said,

“This is my fault alone, as I completely gave up pushing for them when an activist entered our stock in 2020. I no longer had hope of achieving any of it as a public company with no defense mechanisms.”

He added that he planned his exit the moment he knew he was no longer right for the company. Shedding light on his biggest mistake and chalking out how that added burden on the shoulders of the company, Dorsey said,

“The biggest mistake I made was continuing to invest in building tools for us to manage the public conversation, versus building tools for the people using Twitter to easily manage it for themselves. This burdened the company with too much power, and opened us to significant outside pressure.”

Towards the end, Dorsey emphasized that only a free and open protocol for social media would truly live up to the said principles.