Joe Rogan Experience #1236 — Jack Dorsey Transcript

Transcript

0:00 3, 2, 1, boom. Hello Jack. What's up? Nice to meet you man. Nice to meet you finally. Yeah. We wanted to stay connected with each other. I remember Odeo. We loved this idea of being anywhere and being able to share what was happening. what they were trying to do. They were trying to talk with one another. They were trying to His brother's name is Buzz.

3:17 because it went from just broadcasting what's happening to conversation And he was trying to tag around topics that he was tweeting about. how does that happen where this one thing sort of gets adopted by everybody and takes over and then just becomes And someone said recently that Twitter was discovered. and some of those places are pretty uncomfortable. Well, it also gets to some really deep places

6:45 what this person's up to. So I go to their site and it's just them tweeting mean shit at people that we need to pay a lot more attention to. Um, Twitter is unique in that it has two main spaces, not possible before. Now, when this is all happening, what's the conversation like at saying without being as clear about it. So what does the like button incentivize? What does the

10:09 things like it allows for whistleblowers and journalists who might fear for their career or how do we recognize that in real time and show that it's such a, I mean, it's his preferred platform Yeah, I mean, the conversation has definitely evolved. We have global leaders all around the world using us in different ways. Some, you know, more with a higher velocity, some

13:26 saw ISIS when the world saw ISIS and we needed to change our policy to deal with it. Um, what was No, yeah. the First Amendment online. So we try to get as many perspectives as possible, take that, I have read them. I don't think I've ever read their terms of service. property, um property protections. You go down, you scroll down, most important? Right. And we have to consider physical safety to be the one thing that we

17:37 They want his address, including Kathy Griffin. And it's such an interesting case study to see how that evolved over just 48 hours. Totally. How does that happen? And oftentimes these accounts might be connected or they start one account that gets banned. So we do have a lot of occurrences of suspending or temporarily suspending accounts because of activities across accounts.

21:25 let's take Brexit, for example. So if I followed a bunch of accounts that, a different, um, a different reasoning. We don't make it easy for anyone to do that. And that is a loss. work. They'll stay in their timeline and they'll see what they need to see. And I can certainly imagine, you know, why if I'm just following a bunch of people who have the exact same take on this, it just continues to embolden and embolden and embolden.

23:43 It's on a different surface. It's only conversation. everything is on the same surface, right? It's all one surface. Yeah. My friend Kurt Metzger Like, this is the original statement, the subject. I can take control of the conversation and the people who might find that interesting, my life on Instagram. I can compose my thoughts within a Facebook post and it can look so

26:47 Composing a letter. is that you can't be verbose. structure and the constraint allowed that that flow um the the thinking was we we looked at um No. Even though there's a lot of chaos. The jury's out. I don't even care. Twitters and you, and you have a, you have a completely different experience based on what Twitter you follow and what Twitter you participate in.

29:53 responding to people and it just didn't the sheer numbers well I think when I Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. You're pushing, you're pushing more out, expanding the network. Yeah, and I reinforced it. We want more people contributing things back to the network, back to the public conversation. And I, I know it doesn't feel like this today for most people, And then it's not just them broadcasting.

32:38 Sometimes people just like to go on there and talk shit. if you're a racist, you still can get electricity. And some people think that you should have that And there's sometimes people use the term hate speech, and it's just a cheap way to They can go into that public square. So it's not the speech. When do you decide this is hate speech? So we can look at that behavior.

36:37 or coordinating with multiple accounts that they don't own to go after someone. You might have to show more replies But how would you know? And they've learned. Okay. Right? So those are the things that our technology allows. It changes the velocity. It right now get him to answer me in real time but ari shafir got kicked off of twitter because he That's Ari, though.

39:53 One of our agents, human agents, without context of their friendship or that relationship, saw it as a violent threat and took action on it. that we're reacting the right way. suspension actions. They don't remove content. They might suggest to a human to look at this, But if you look at the ARCA technology, it's a given that anytime something is created, it's going to exist forever.

42:36 Are they retweeting it? It's valuable. It's radically changing the way people communicate with each other. You would say it like, that's how we would say it. But a really powerful one, an unprecedented method of distributing information. But I also think about it because of podcasts, Like for me, it's like, ooh, boy, to what what I distribute I just wanted to be able to have a freak show just talk to people

46:41 pay attention to him like okay but he also talked about he he responsibility of these platforms, whether it's YouTube or Twitter or anyone? What is their responsibility to decide whether or not someone should or shouldn't be able Everyone has a right to, but you still ban people. No. Right. He did not say that on the platform. And when all the other platforms were taking them off, we didn't find those. We, we didn't,

51:04 their platform. There's been a giant blowback because of that, because people are saying, we need to be most severe. But otherwise, everyone has a right to these technologies. And I think Should come out today or tomorrow. Was there an internal discussion about actually banning the president of the United States? where powerful figures or public figures might be in violation of our terms

54:30 we should see how our leaders think and how they act. And essentially, that informs voting, And you look at all of his tweets all the way back then, and it's pretty consistent to today. Fuck the world. Like, don't you have shit to do, man? terms of his ability to communicate, his access to words, the way he measured his But you know, when you see Trump, he doesn't talk better than me.

57:13 That's my point is that this is this weird gray area where I think overall I definitely support your decision to not ban him for violating your terms of service. is let's scope the problem down a bit Do you just leak something that you shouldn't have told them? People find ways around that and whatnot. These are considerations that we're making and trying to understand what the impact would be and how we might evolve it.

59:32 It's an individual and it's unlocking. I know what you're saying. Right. Aren't they older? It's connecting with the people you don't know. who are the ones who are making these decisions as to whether or not someone has violated regulatory and our regulators and our governments, I think the conversation is often about how regulators will come in and start writing rules and setting expectations for how companies or

1:03:07 So, okay. So like anybody can have a Twitter account. Where do you see this going? And does it get more intrusive? Does it get deeper into our lives? Like right now that we have global conversations about some things that will become crisis, more open society allows us to solve problems much faster. So you, in many ways, see Twitter as because it incentivizes more of the echo chambers,

1:06:35 I think we have a responsibility to make it easier to do that. Right. How do you do that though? The probability is higher that you'll get more you'll get more variety perspective and not even, don't even follow Brexit, follow vote, what their world is their timeline hashtags can be corrupted too. Totally. They can be gamed. because I put a picture up on Instagram of some deer meat

1:09:31 Hashtag vegan cat. pick a person. and start mocking them with that hashtag. That was a real one. surface and for comics it was a great way to promote shows and it was it was an interesting that from anywhere and you could do it from your phone and you could just be roaming around and say, this network that developed between people. and that is Facebook. Facebook optimized

1:13:11 For a while people reason team speak, but I don't know. No, it wasn't you were one that recent wasn't that wasn't team speak guys would go there and you could send people files through it and internet 70s technologies. IRC is what I was talking about. IRC? Yeah. So Internet Relay Chat, and Usenet, which were these old Internet 70s technologies. And it's a range around topics.

1:14:40 I mean, before it was just a thing that was happening that was happening on people's computers. like blockchain, for instance, and I think, you know, we're moving to a world where anything with no repercussions. The good side is anybody can say whatever they want. Certainly things become a lot more public. Certainly things become a lot more open. Certainly the, the,

1:17:23 what has it been? years 13 years we'll And we have aspirations to, you know, be the first consideration for the global public conversation. But where they do go above 140 is in replies. Is there any consideration to expanding it further? I would like edit, the ability to edit, like if you make a typo or something like that, but also the ability for people to see the original.

1:20:23 When you send a text, you can't take it back. But you could build it such that maybe we introduce a maybe we introduce a five second to 30 second delay in the sending. Totally. Yeah. What's interesting to me is how few people use video. A lot of sports. I mean, we see a lot of like just the, the replays and the recaps. This is what I was something the ability to like index in I think think is really critical. So it's not,

1:24:57 it just, it's not fair. A second is around, you know, this, this concept of an echo chamber and just get a completely different perspective. That evolves. all the time. It's interesting the way you're phrasing this too, that you, you are looking at willingly of its own choice takes that into consideration, that they want to serve the world and serve

1:28:01 You know, I just listened to the recent earnings call, and one of the things that Elon said was, look, there are two reasons for Tesla. You also seem to be embracing this responsibility that you're helping to evolve culture. sued i'm pretty sure they removed that from what would you call that their their operational It's way weirder to say, ah, fuck it, we were wrong.

1:30:34 money, we'll do the right thing. Makes more money. that question. What's also interesting because Google is so all encompassing, right? missouri it's a show me state are you really from Missouri? arguments and yelling matches around the kitchen table, but like, I appreciate the fact that I, we could have them and I didn't, to, in this union that, I think that's right.

1:34:09 this greater good that the internet has really started. And it's not, it's not led by any one it's very important to just have this open discussion. Peer review is a great process and it works. also comes ramifications. And if we're not talking about the ramifications and like, Have you guys considered expanding your influence in other venues? What we're good at is conversation and what we're good at is public conversation.

1:37:36 And that just opened the door for more types of use cases. And there's some really exciting things coming out with Periscope that I think add a new dimension to what conversation looks like and how it, uh, And it became a thing that was entirely new. And we observed it and we learned Why keep it as Periscope? Why not have it be like Twitter live? Yeah, he's really good at it. And he's one that I think has figured out, you know, just the knack behind it. You know,

1:40:30 observation, hone our power of connecting the dots and looking at all the patterns and what people Doing something in sync with more people is interesting. it's happening. How much more people do you have on Twitter than Periscope? coffee merchant. And as you walked up, your name would pop up on the register. So you could say, They saw it as something that wasn't successful. And, you know, recently the team reached number

1:43:55 It's really, really cool. I mean, when you can save 10% at Whole Foods, I mean, that's real. And they won't even enable them to get in the door in the front, in the first place. Yep. Instant. Instant. Yeah. cash house? Maybe we should take it. It's open. It's free now. I mean, one of the things that's kind of cool about the Cash App is that you can buy and sell Bitcoin with it.

1:46:16 I think it will because just given all the tests it's been through as a service. We're the first publicly traded company to talk to the SEC about Bitcoin and life savings into Bitcoin. So we developed some very simple restrictions and constraints. Like Now, when you have something like the Cash App, which is very much a disruptive technology They all love blockchain because of the efficiencies it can create for their business

1:49:54 So you don't have to go to an institution to get the records? you will become irrelevant because technology will just continue to march on and make you We got to make ourselves uncomfortable. Totally. exciting. Yeah. I'm very excited by it. And I'm also very excited that the fact that it's only but at least being able to see that global conversation,

1:53:14 it's amazing to think about where that can go and where that can take us. some of the issues that we're still facing that were probably in the dark before. I agree. My pleasure.