Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has responded to new Twitter owner Elon Musk's recently released "Twitter Files," a series of Twitter threads containing internal documents, emails, and Slack logs about some of the company's controversial decisions. In a recent newsletter, Dorsey criticizes the way the files were released as well as the attacks on former Twitter employees.
He believes that the company has nothing to hide. "I wish they [the files] were released WikiLeaks-style, with many more eyes and interpretations to consider," Dorsey stated.
The Twitter Files discuss moderation "blacklists", how the platform handled the controversy about Hunter Biden's laptop, and the removal of Donald Trump from Twitter following the January 6th riots.
Regarding this removal decision, Dorsey believes that there were "no ill intent or hidden agendas, and everyone acted according to the best information we had at the time". Still, he believes that "mistakes were made" and if they had focused on more tools for the people instead of tools for the company, and moved much faster towards complete transparency, they wouldn’t be in a situation of needing a "fresh reset."
Dorsey also stated that the online attacks that the company's former employees are getting are "dangerous, and doesn't solve anything." He added, "If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof".
About a week ago, three members of Twitter's now-defunct Trust and Safety Council resigned, warning that the "safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline". To this, new CEO Elon Musk replied, "It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!" More recently, former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth had to leave his home after Musk suggested, in now-deleted tweets, that he advocates for child sexualization.
Dorsey doesn't mention Musk in any way in his post. When the latter took over the company, Dorsey said that "Elon is the singular solution I trust."
Dorsey also mentions that he is working on a decentralized social media protocol called "Bluesky" and floats a few ideas of how social media should work. For one, he believes that when it comes to content moderation, "ranking and relevance algorithms" should be used instead of a centralized system. He also says that there should be a free and open protocol for social media that is not owned by a single company or group of companies, and is also resilient to corporate and government influence.
Finally, he intends to give messaging app Signal $1 million a year as part of an effort to fund companies working on open protocols.
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