Jack Dorsey Apologizes for Twitter Censorship

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey offered a public apology for the company’s serious problems.

Dorsey confessed that he “completely gave up” on trying to fend off activist forces within Twitter. He recalled how former President Donald Trump’s suspension from the platform illustrated to him that companies “have become far too powerful.”

“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 manage it for themselves easily. This burdened the company with too much power and opened us to significant outside pressure (such as advertising budgets),” Dorsey said in a blog post.

He’s not sorry he canceled Donald Trump which defies credulity since he left terrorists and distators up to blog away.

I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter, or how we got here. After a clear warning we’d take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter. Was this correct?

— jack (@jack) January 14, 2021

I believe this was the right decision for Twitter. We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety. Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all.

— jack (@jack) January 14, 2021

So, he’s still insisting he did the right thing. He feels the problem was their inability to promote a healthy conversation. He still doesn’t get it.

Dorsey thinks no one had ill intent. Maybe he’s naive.

I continue to believe there was no ill intent or hidden agendas, and everyone acted according to the best information we had at the time. Of course mistakes were made. But if we had focused more on tools for the people using the service rather than tools for us, and moved much faster towards absolute transparency, we probably wouldn’t be in this situation of needing a fresh reset (which I am supportive of). Again, I own all of this and our actions, and all I can do is work to make it right.

At least Dorsey doesn’t believe the government should control the conversation even though Twitter was a rat’s nest of government agents.

Of course governments want to shape and control the public conversation, and will use every method at their disposal to do so, including the media. And the power a corporation wields to do the same is only growing. It’s critical that the people have tools to resist this, and that those tools are ultimately owned by the people. Allowing a government or a few corporations to own the public conversation is a path towards centralized control.

I’m a strong believer that any content produced by someone for the internet should be permanent until the original author chooses to delete it. It should be always available and addressable. Content takedowns and suspensions should not be possible…

You can read more of Dorsey’s ideas here or here.

PowerInbox