Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey lamented the centralization of the internet, but at least had the self-awareness to admit that’s something he had a major hand in creating.
“[The] days of usenet, irc, the web…even email (w PGP)…were amazing,” Dorsey tweeted on Saturday. “[Centralizing] discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet. I realize I’m partially to blame, and regret it.”
In other words, Dorsey tweeted a big old whoopsie.
Dorsey, who stepped down as CEO of Twitter last year, obviously has played a significant role in centralizing information on the internet. While the social media giant might struggle to keep up with investors’ growth expectations, Twitter’s cultural impact is unquestioned. A large portion of what goes viral on other social sites like Instagram or TikTok — how trends start — begins on Twitter. It’s also a hub for media folks (full disclosure: like myself), which means it has an outsized impact on what makes the news.
Dorsey has spent a fair bit of time promoting the idea of decentralization on the internet, even pushing Twitter to get behind an open-source social network standard in 2019.
When he stepped down from Twitter, Dorsey, still CEO of digital payments company Square, noted he’d have more time to focus on Bitcoin and crypto, which he likes, again, because of Square’s aim to create “decentralized financial services.”
Still, as much as he might want to decentralize the internet now, Dorsey remains worth billions of dollars on the back of the oopsie he tweeted out.
