The Founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, would like you to know that Dorsey misses the early days of the internet when protocols like IRC made the web seem like a place of boundless possibilities. Dorsey also knows he is partly to blame for the current state of things.
“The days of Usenet, IRC, the web… even email (with PGP)… were amazing,” Dorsey said on Saturday in a tweet spotted by Mashable. “Centralizing discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet. I realize I’m partially to blame, and regret it.”
Jack Dorsey’s tweet is a remarkable admission by a tech executive who made billions creating a platform that centralized the way we consume the news. Twitter may not be as big as Tik Tok and Facebook, but the effect it has had on the information economy is undeniable. Many of us turn to Twitter when we want to follow ongoing events in close to real-time, but at times the company has struggled to combat misinformation, much to the harm of our public institutions.
This is not Jack Dorsey’s first time lamenting the current state of the internet. Dorsey went on a rant about how Web3 had already been co-opted by investors in December, “You don’t own ‘Web3,’” he said. “The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives.”
