Jack Dorsey is the co-founder of one of the most influential social media platforms in the world, and the man who started it all. In this episode, Jack talks about how he and his co-founders built the service, how they built it, and how it became the world s largest social media platform, and what it means to be a part of a community of likeminded people who are working together to make the world a better place. Tweet Me! Timestamps: 0:00 - When did the service start? 4:30 - How did it become so big? 11:00 What is the future of social media? 13:30 How did we get to where we are today? 16:00 -- What s next for the service? 17:20 - What s the next step in the evolution of the company? 18:40 - Who was the first person to use the symbol on the site? 19:15 - What was the idea for the first tweet? 22:30 -- When did it all begin? 23:00 | What was it like when it started? 24:40 -- How did the site become so large? 25:10 - What's next for it? 26:10 -- How does it feel like now? 27:15 -- What does it mean for the future? 28: What is it like being on the internet? 29: What s it like to be on the social network? 31:10 32:15 -- What's the most important thing to you can do on the platform? 35:10 | How do you think about the platform you can learn from someone else? 36:30 | What do you want to do in the long term? 37:30 // What s your biggest takeaway from this episode? 39:40 | What are you looking forward to in the next episode of the show? 40:00 // What are your favorite part of the podcast? 45:00 + 40: What's your biggest challenge? 47:00 Is there something you want me to do next? Theme song by Ian Dorsch? Music by Jeff Perla Theme by Jeff Kaale ( ) Theme music by Ian McKellen ( ) Music by Ian Somerhalder ( ) Download MP3 by Jeff McElroy ( )
00:03:13.000And that changed the company completely.
00:03:16.000That changed the service because it went from just broadcasting what's happening to conversation and to being able to address anyone publicly out in the open.
00:03:28.000Which came with it a lot of power and also a lot of issues as well.
00:03:32.000Yeah, the use of hashtags, like looking up hashtag, you know, fry fest or hashtag, you know, anytime there's something weird that's in the news, that's such a unique way to find things.
00:03:45.000But to go on Twitter and to utilize that, it's interesting that this guy just did it just to contact his brother.
00:04:12.000With the at symbol, we made a page that collected all mentions of your name.
00:04:17.000With the hashtag, we allowed people to search immediately so you could tap on the keyword and you would see everyone talking about that or tweeting about that specific hashtag.
00:04:26.000So these things were just emergent behaviors that we didn't predict and they became the lifeblood of the service.
00:04:33.000What's fascinating to me about something like Twitter or even something like YouTube is that there's not a lot of other ones like it.
00:05:09.000I don't think we could necessarily build for that.
00:05:13.000Someone said recently to—we just gathered a bunch of our leadership last week in Palm Springs for an offsite—and someone said recently that Twitter was discovered.
00:05:24.000And I think what's behind all that is that it hit something foundational.
00:05:45.000And it's just a simple idea of, you know, if you could text with the entire world, if you could actually reach anyone in the world, or anyone could see what you're thinking, which I think is also the beautiful thing about Twitter.
00:06:00.000About text and the medium, you can actually get someone's raw thoughts and anyone in the world can see that instantaneously.
00:06:28.000There's a weirdness to sending text, particularly anonymously, and there's so many accounts that are just an egg.
00:06:38.000There's so many accounts where they're clearly designed.
00:06:41.000Sometimes someone will tweet something mean to me, and I'm like, hmm, I wonder what this person's up to.
00:06:46.000So I go to their site, and it's just them tweeting mean shit at people all day long.
00:06:50.000It's probably some angry person at work and they're like, I'm just going to find people and fuck with them all day.
00:06:56.000When did you realize, or when did you realize, I'm sure you're aware of it, when did you realize that this was almost out of your control in terms of the scale of it?
00:08:03.000You can insert yourself into hashtags and to search.
00:08:09.000And these are areas that people have taken advantage of.
00:08:13.000And these are the areas that people have gamed our systems to, in some cases, artificially amplify, but also just to spread a lot of things that weren't possible with a velocity that they're not possible before.
00:08:28.000Now, when this is all happening, what's the conversation like at Twitter when you're recognizing that this is happening, that people are kind of gaming the system?
00:09:45.000We incentivize a lot of outrage and hot takes.
00:09:50.000Because of some of the dynamics in the service not allowing a lot of nuance in conversation earlier on.
00:10:01.000Pseudonyms, this ability to not use your real name.
00:10:07.000It incentivizes some positive things, like it allows for whistleblowers and journalists who might fear for their career or even worse their life under certain regimes, but also allows for people, like the example you mentioned, of just random fire and spread of abuse and harassment throughout.
00:10:28.000So those are the things that we're looking at, and how do we enable more of the conversation to evolve?
00:10:35.000How do we increase the credibility or reputation of accounts?
00:10:40.000How do we identify credible voices within a particular domain?
00:10:46.000Not just through this very coarse grain blue verified badge, but if you're an expert in a particular topic, how do we recognize that in real time and show that so that we can provide more context to who you're talking to?
00:11:01.000And if you want to engage in a deeper conversation or just Ignore, mute, or block them.
00:11:07.000But what is the conversation like while you're at work?
00:11:09.000Like when you're realizing that all this stuff is happening and you're realizing that now, I mean, particularly because the president uses it so often in such a I mean, it's this preferred platform for communicating with the people.
00:12:38.000But It's looking at all those dynamics and not trying to hyper-focus on any one particular one because if we do, we're only building it for one portion of the population or only one perceived present day crisis.
00:12:56.000What I'm trying to get at was, okay, when things come up, say if you find out that there's people from ISIS that are using Twitter, and they're using Twitter and posting things, what is the conversation?
00:13:33.000So once you realized that people from ISIS were making Twitter accounts, and they were trying to recruit people and doing all these things, what was the thought process?
00:13:49.000Yeah, but there are people who have experienced it in different forms, in different mediums.
00:13:55.000So we reach out to our government partners, for instance, or law enforcement partners.
00:13:58.000We reach out to our peer companies to ask if they're seeing the same things that we're seeing.
00:14:04.000We have a bunch of civil societies that we talk to to get their take on it as well, and we try to balance that across various spectrums, whether it be organizations that are more focused on preventing online harassment all the way to the ACLU and the EFF who are protecting the First Amendment online.
00:14:28.000So we try to get as many perspectives as possible, take that, and then make some informed decisions, but also realize that we're probably going to make some mistakes along the way, and all we can do to correct some of that is just be open about where we are, and that's probably where we've failed the most in the past,
00:14:45.000is we just haven't been open about our thinking process, what led to particular decisions, how our terms of service evolve.
00:14:57.000As an area in our industry, it's a mess.
00:15:49.000But I read ours and one of the things I noticed right away is, you know, you read our terms of service and one of the first things that we put at the top of the page was copyright and intellectual property protections.
00:16:06.000You go down, you scroll down, you see everything about violent threats and abuse and harassment and safety.
00:16:16.000It's not that the company intended for that to be the order.
00:17:04.000Physical threats, doxing, anything that impinges on someone's physical safety.
00:17:10.000This is an area where I don't think technology and services like ours have focused on enough.
00:17:18.000We haven't focused on the off-platform ramifications of what happens online.
00:17:22.000So what do you do, like, here's a good for instance.
00:17:26.000This situation with this young kid who had the MAGA hat on and the Native American gentleman who was in front of him banging the drum, and then people are calling for this kid's name.
00:17:36.000They want his name, they want his address, including Kathy Griffin.
00:17:39.000Like, how do you handle something like that?
00:17:42.000Because that's essentially a request for doxing.
00:17:45.000Yeah, and that is a new vector that we haven't seen in mass.
00:17:50.000These are the cases that bring up entirely new things.
00:20:21.000It could be trying to use the same phone number, same email address, IP addresses, device IDs, all these things that we can use to judge what's happening within the context.
00:20:31.000So we do have a lot of occurrences of...
00:20:34.000Suspending or temporarily suspending accounts because of activities across accounts.
00:20:51.000Seeing that unfold, and when you see someone with one take, it kind of emboldens something to follow along, and then this mob kind of rolls.
00:21:00.000So there has to be a way for us to incentivize a lot more considered and more nuanced introspection of what's going on.
00:21:28.000So if I followed a bunch of accounts that, like Boris Johnson, who was constantly giving me information about reasons to leave, I would probably only see that perspective.
00:22:02.000If, however, during that time you followed the hashtag, you followed the hashtag vote leave, 95% of the conversation and the tweets you see are all reasons to leave, but there's a small percentage that shows a different perspective and that shows a different reasoning.
00:22:22.000We don't make it easy for anyone to do that.
00:22:26.000Easy for anyone to follow the alternative...
00:22:29.000Follow the hashtag, follow a topic, follow an interest.
00:22:33.000And because of that, we help build an echo chamber and something that doesn't really challenge any perspective.
00:22:42.000And not to say that we should force that upon people.
00:22:46.000But we don't even make it easy for people to do in the first place.
00:22:49.000The way you do that today is you go to the Explore tab, you search for a hashtag or you tap into a hashtag and you can see all the conversation.
00:23:03.000And I can certainly imagine 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.
00:23:13.000And they see nothing of a different perspective on the exact same situation.
00:23:21.000What's interesting to me is the difference between Twitter and Instagram.
00:23:26.000Essentially, it's not just the photographs.
00:23:29.000What's weird that has happened was there's shitty people on Instagram as well.
00:23:33.000I mean, there's a lot of arguments and things along those lines, but they don't overwhelm the initial post.
00:23:41.000Whereas with Twitter— It's on a different surface.
00:24:10.000But even if there's a photograph, even if somebody posts a photograph on Twitter and has conversation under it, the photograph seems to be of secondary importance.
00:24:17.000Yeah, it's super fluid and super messy, too.
00:24:21.000But the thing is, on Instagram or any blog, you have this post, this statement, and you have comments underneath.
00:24:31.000Whereas with Twitter, everything is on the same surface.
00:24:36.000Yeah, my friend Kurt Metzger likes that about Facebook.
00:24:39.000He says, because in Twitter, he goes, I post something, and then all these fucking morons post something, and he goes, you know, Kurt, he's very animated.
00:24:49.000He's like, and their shit looks just like my shit.
00:24:53.000He goes, but if I post something on Facebook, he goes, I have this whole thing.
00:24:57.000Like, this is the original statement, and then underneath it, yeah, you fucking say whatever you want, but no one's reading that.
00:25:04.000Like, they're reading the original initial post, and it's clear that there's a differentiation between the initial post and the secondary post.
00:25:11.000Yeah, I... You know, there's room for both models, but I... This conversation, most conversations, it's not you making a statement and me just reacting to that.
00:25:24.000Our conversation evolves based on what we say.
00:25:32.000I can take control of the conversation and the people who might find that interesting follow it and the folks that don't just stop listening.
00:25:40.000Whereas you can't do that in a post-comment model.
00:26:04.000Like, I can compose my life on Instagram.
00:26:07.000I can compose my thoughts within a Facebook post, and it can look so perfect.
00:26:15.000But the best of Twitter is just super raw, and it's right to the thinking process.
00:26:21.000And I just think that's so beautiful because it gets to consciousness.
00:26:25.000It gets to something deeper, and I think that deeper— Well, how so?
00:26:29.000How is it different than a post on Instagram or a post on Facebook?
00:26:32.000The speed demands – the character constraint, the speed kind of just demands a more conscious, present, focused thinking versus like stepping back and – Composing a letter.
00:26:48.000Yeah, and composing a letter and thinking about all the outcomes.
00:26:51.000But oftentimes people do compose it as a letter and they break it up into separate 280 character posts.
00:26:57.000What was the thought processing going from 140 to 280?
00:27:01.000Because the one thing that I liked about 140 is that you can't be verbose.
00:28:19.000But what I... Twitter seems to be more fun, if that makes any sense.
00:28:24.000Even though there's a lot of chaos, one of my favorite things is when someone posts something stupid and then underneath it is a bunch of GIFs.
00:29:18.000You have all these different Twitters and you have a completely different experience based on what Twitter you follow and what Twitter you participate in.
00:29:27.000Some of them are like super engaging, super funny.
00:29:31.000Some of them are you want to walk away from it.
00:29:34.000Yeah, I got to a certain point where I couldn't read replies anymore.
00:29:50.000Didn't I don't have time and I don't have time to be constantly responding to people and it just didn't the sheer numbers Well, I think when I got around three million ish followers.
00:30:02.000It's just it's Overwhelming like I don't have the resources.
00:30:06.000Yeah, I I'm a huge believer in serendipity So you you you look at your replies once and you might see something that just like strikes you and that's enough You don't need to read through all of them.
00:30:15.000Yeah And then you might miss something groovy.
00:30:18.000I You might, but I also believe the most important things come back up.
00:30:21.000What I used to do a lot would I would go through my mentions and when people would – I essentially used it as almost a news aggregator.
00:30:29.000I would go through my mentions and people would post cool stories and then I would retweet those.
00:30:33.000And so because people knew that I would retweet them, they would send me a lot of cool stuff.
00:30:36.000So because of that, because of reciprocating, I got a lot of really cool stuff sent my way.
00:30:41.000Yeah, you're pushing more out to expand the network.
00:30:47.000I wanted to thank people for posting cool stuff, and they loved the fact that they would get a retweet, and so they would send me interesting science stories or very bizarre nature stories, and I'd just be retweeting them all the time.
00:31:00.000But then after a while, I'm like, this is a lot of time.
00:31:46.000I followed Rhonda Patrick and a bunch of folks who are into sauna and Wim Hof and Ice Bass and Ben Greenfield.
00:31:58.000And you just follow them and you just get all this new information about alternative views of how to stay healthy, how to live longer.
00:32:07.000I can't find that anywhere else, in one place like that.
00:32:10.000And then it's not just them broadcasting.
00:32:12.000When they retweet something or when they tweet something, there's a whole conversation about it.
00:32:16.000So, you know, some people say, this has not been my experience, or this is not true for me, or actually, have you seen this connected thing?
00:32:26.000And I just go down this rabbit hole and I learn so much, but that's not the experience for everyone.
00:32:33.000Well, yeah, it's not the experience for everyone, and it's not really...
00:32:36.000I don't think it's what everyone wants, either.
00:32:38.000Sometimes people just like to go on there and talk shit.
00:32:40.000I mean, there's someone that's trapped in a cubicle right now, and they just want to go on there and get in arguments about gun control or whether or not Nancy Pelosi's the devil.
00:33:01.000There's a discussion, I should say, where some people believe that things like Twitter or Facebook or any forum where you're having a public discussion should be considered almost like a public utility.
00:33:13.000Like anyone has access to the electric power, even if you're...
00:33:19.000Even if you're a racist, you still can get electricity.
00:33:22.000And some people think that you should have that same ability with something like Twitter, or the same ability with something like Instagram.
00:33:29.000Obviously, we're in uncharted territory, and you are in uncharted territory.
00:33:39.000When you see someone that's saying something, That you might think is offensive to some folks, but not offensive to the person who's saying it.
00:33:49.000Maybe the person who's saying it feels like they need to express themselves and this is important to say.
00:33:53.000And how do you decide whether or not this is a valid discussion or if this is, air quotes, hate speech, which is a...
00:34:02.000You know, there's some things that are hate speech, and there's sometimes people use the term hate speech, and it's just a cheap way to shut down a conversation.
00:34:16.000We look at how the tool is being used.
00:34:20.000You're right in that I think when people see Twitter, they see and they expect it to be a public square.
00:34:27.000They can go into that public square, they can say whatever they want, they can get on a pedestal, and people might gather around them and listen to what they have to say.
00:34:36.000Some of them might find it offensive and they leave.
00:34:39.000The difference is there's also this concept of this megaphone, and the megaphone can be highly targeted now with Twitter as well.
00:34:49.000So it's not the speech, it's how it's amplified.
00:34:59.000And then you have a bunch of people, or let's say just one person, and their Twitter feed is overwhelmingly attacking this prominent feminist.
00:35:08.000Just constantly attacking her, calling her a liar, calling her this, calling her that.
00:35:11.000When do you decide this is harassment?
00:35:14.000When do you decide this is hate speech?
00:35:39.000We look at oftentimes, as you said, like the probability of someone who is harassing one person, it's highly probable that they're also harassing 10 more people.
00:35:53.000We can look at How many times this person is being blocked or muted or reported?
00:36:00.000And based on all that data, we can actually take some action.
00:36:05.000But we also have to correlate it with the other side of that because people go on and they coordinate blocks as well.
00:36:13.000And they coordinate harassment and they coordinate, I'm sorry, not harassment, but reporting.
00:36:19.000Reporting a particular account to get it shut down and to take the voice off the service.
00:36:24.000So these are the considerations we have to make, but it all starts with conduct.
00:36:30.000And oftentimes we'll see coordinated conduct, whether it be that one person opening multiple accounts or coordinating with multiple accounts that they don't own to go after someone.
00:38:53.000But in your replies page, we have a little bit more room because this is a conversation that starts up and some people just want to disrupt it.
00:39:02.000And all we're saying is we're going to look at moving the disruption down.
00:39:07.000Not that it's hidden, but it's still there.
00:39:09.000But you just see it a little bit farther down.
00:39:44.000So what happened there, what probably happened there, and I'm not sure of the particular case, but what probably happened there is someone might have reported that tweet.
00:39:52.000One of our agents, human agents, without context of their friendship or that relationship, saw it as a violent threat and took action on it.
00:40:04.000And those are the mistakes that we're going to make.
00:40:06.000That's why we need an appeals process.
00:40:08.000Or Bert needs to keep his fucking greasy hands off Ari's records.
00:40:15.000We need to make sure that we're reacting the right way.
00:40:19.000Like, look, we're going to make mistakes.
00:40:22.000The problem with this system right now is most of the work is actually, and the burden is actually on the victims of abuse while they're getting harassed.
00:40:33.000So a lot of our system doesn't Enforce or act unless these tweets are reported.
00:40:41.000So we don't take suspension actions or removal of content actions unless it's reported.
00:40:49.000The algorithms rank and order the conversation, but they don't take suspension actions.
00:40:56.000They might suggest to a human to look at this, who might look at our rules and look at the content and try to look at the context of the conversation and then take action.
00:41:06.000But we would like to move towards a lot more automated enforcement.
00:41:12.000But more importantly, how do we amplify more of the healthier discussion and conversation?
00:41:26.000We're going to a world, especially with technologies like blockchain, that all content that exists, that is ever created, will exist forever.
00:41:42.000Our role is around what we recommend based on your interest and based on who you follow and helping you to get into that on-ramp.
00:41:52.000But if you look at the arc of technology, it's a given that anytime something is created, it's going to exist forever.
00:42:01.000This is what blockchain helps enable down the line.
00:42:05.000And we need to make sure that we're paying attention to that.
00:42:08.000And also realizing that, you know, our role is like, how do we get people the stuff that they really want to see and find valuable that they'll learn from, that they'll make them think that will help them evolve the conversation as well.
00:42:23.000Now when you say amplify the messages that you deem to be more positive, right?
00:43:15.000We want to encourage people into more Bigger, informative, global conversations that they'll learn from.
00:43:25.000Are you like constantly aware of how much this is changing society and that you are one of the four or five different modalities that are radically changing society, whether it's Facebook or Instagram or any of these social media platforms?
00:43:43.000It's radically changing the way people communicate with each other.
00:43:47.000There's a giant impact on the way human beings talk and see each other and the way we process ideas and the way we distribute information.
00:44:24.000And I just think it's so reflective of what the world is and in some cases what the world...
00:44:31.000Wants to be so it's a pathway for thinking just a pathway for people to get their thoughts out but a really a Powerful one an unprecedented method of distributing information.
00:44:45.000It's really nothing ever been like this before no no and in and This mode of communicating will not go away.
00:44:57.000It will become a lot more connected and that's why our work is so critical to figure out some of the dynamics at play that cause more negative outcomes than positive outcomes.
00:45:14.000I think about it because it's just a hugely significant thing.
00:45:23.000But I also think about it because of podcasts, because podcasts are in a similar way.
00:45:29.000Just no one saw it coming, and the people that are involved in it are like, what the fuck are we doing?
00:45:37.000Like, for me, it's like, ooh, boy, I get to talk to guys like Ben Greenfield and Jonathan Haidt and all these different people and learn some stuff.
00:45:48.000I clearly learned way more from doing this podcast than I ever would have learned without it.
00:45:57.000So now all of a sudden there's this signal that I'm sending out to millions and millions of people and then people are like, well, you have a responsibility.
00:46:26.000I didn't think about it that way, and I don't think that's what I'm doing.
00:46:28.000I think I'm talking to people, and you can listen.
00:46:31.000But it's giving that person a platform, because they'll say, well, no, they'll tone down, like, Milo Yiannopoulos.
00:46:36.000That was one of the arguments people gave me.
00:46:37.000He toned down his platform when he was on your show so you could get more people to pay attention to him.
00:46:42.000Like, okay, but he also talked about, he, that was one of the reasons why he was exposed was my show because he talked about that it's okay to have sex with underage boys if they're gay because there's like a mentor relationship between the older gay man and the younger,
00:46:59.000and people are like, what the fuck are you?
00:47:01.000And that was a big part of why he's kind of been removed from the public conversation.
00:47:08.000And then there's the discussion like, well, what is that?
00:47:11.000What is removing someone from the public conversation?
00:47:13.000If someone is very popular and they have all these people that like to listen to them, what is the responsibility of these platforms, whether it's YouTube or Twitter or anyone?
00:47:23.000What is their responsibility to decide whether or not someone should or shouldn't be able to speak?
00:47:31.000And this is a thing that I've been struggling with, and I bounce around inside my own head, and I see that you guys struggle with it, and pretty much everyone does.
00:48:33.000So we saw this domino effect over a weekend of one platform banning him and then another and another and another in very, very quick succession.
00:49:28.000But what we're looking at is the conduct and what he did on our platform.
00:49:34.000So what did he do on your platform that you all were in agreement that this is enough?
00:49:40.000I'm not sure what the actual violations were, but we have a set number of actions and if they keep getting...
00:49:51.000If an account keeps violating terms of service, ultimately it leads to permanent suspension.
00:49:59.000And when all the other platforms were taking them off, we didn't find those.
00:50:02.000We didn't find those violations and they weren't reported.
00:50:06.000But again, it goes back to A lot of our motto, people weren't reporting a lot of the tweets that may have been in violation on our service, and we didn't act on them.
00:50:19.000Like, a good instance is what's going on with Patreon.
00:50:23.000I'm sure you're aware of the Sargon of a Cod thing.
00:50:25.000He did a podcast a long time ago, I believe six months or so ago, where he used the N-word and the way he used it is...
00:50:35.000Actually against white nationalists and he also said a bunch of other stuff and they decided, Patreon decided that what he said on a podcast was enough for them to remove him from the platform.
00:50:51.000Even though he didn't do anything on their platform, that was egregious.
00:50:55.000And also, they had previously stated that they were only judging things that occurred on their platform.
00:51:00.000There's been a giant blowback because of that, because people are saying, well, now you're essentially policing and not based on his actions, just on concepts and the communication that he was using, the way he was talking.
00:51:15.000You're eliminating him from being able to...
00:51:18.000Make a living and that you're doing this because he does not fit into your political paradigm, the way you want to view the world.
00:51:31.000I mean, I don't know the nuances of their policy, but we have to pay attention to folks who are using Twitter to shut down the voices of others.
00:53:12.000And even if you were to look at the presidency of Obama, It wasn't exactly the same tone in this exact same language, but there were threats around the same country.
00:53:24.000And we have to take that context into consideration.
00:53:27.000So the second thing is that the most controversial aspect of our rules and our terms of service is probably this clause around public interest and newsworthiness.
00:53:43.000Where powerful figures or public figures might be in violation of our Terms of Service, but the tweet itself is of public interest.
00:53:54.000There should be a conversation around it.
00:53:57.000And that is probably the thing that people disagree with the most and where we have a lot of internal debate.
00:54:07.000But we also have some pretty hard lines.
00:54:09.000If we had a global leader, including the President of the United States, make a violent threat against a private individual, we would take action.
00:54:18.000We always have to balance that with, like, is this something that the public has interest in?
00:54:25.000And I believe generally the answer is yes.
00:54:28.000It's not going to be in every case, but generally the answer is yes, because we should see how our leaders think and how they act.
00:55:12.000You know, it's just I never thought he would keep doing it.
00:55:14.000I thought once he became president, maybe just lock it down, try to do a good job for the country and then After four years or eight years, just go back to his old self.
00:55:32.000See, as a comedian, I think it's awesome because it's so hilariously stupid.
00:55:37.000It's so preposterous that he even has the time to talk about Jeff Bezos' affair and And the fact that he got caught with the National Enquirer getting text messages and calls him Jeff Bozo, like, don't you have shit to do, man?
00:55:52.000But as a comedian, I am a gigantic fan of folly, almost against my better judgment.
00:56:12.000But the other part of me is like, man, This sets a very bizarre tone for the entire country.
00:56:20.000Because one of the things about Obama, like Obama or hate Obama, seems very measured, very articulate, obviously very well educated.
00:56:30.000And I think that that aspect of his presidency was very good for all of us because he represented something that was of a very high standard in terms of his ability to communicate, his access to words, the way he measured his words and held himself.
00:57:38.000So this is a real challenge and something that we're trying to wrap our heads around.
00:57:43.000But, like, one of the things we're trying to do is, like, let's...
00:57:46.000Scope the problem down a bit and let's use the technology we have available to us, like Face ID, like Touch ID, like the biometric stuff to identify the humans.
00:58:12.000It's completely locked into the local device.
00:58:15.000We don't have access to images of your face or whatnot, but the operating system can tell us that this is the legit owner of this phone, and therefore it is human.
00:58:29.000People will find ways around that and whatnot.
00:58:31.000If we go the opposite direction and we look for the bots, the problem with looking for the bots is people assume that they just come through our API, but the scripting has become extremely sophisticated.
00:58:45.000People can script the app, can script the website and make it look very, very human.
00:58:50.000So we're going after this problem first trying to identify the humans as much as we can, utilizing these technologies.
00:58:59.000These are considerations that we're making and trying to understand what the impact would be and how we might evolve it.
00:59:06.000But we need to because that information would provide context for someone like, this is an actual human that I'm talking to and I can invest more time in it or I can just ignore the thing because it's meaningless.
00:59:19.000Now, is Apple willing to share that with you?
00:59:22.000I mean, when you're talking about biometrics, fingerprints, or face ID? No, no, no.
00:59:42.000When you want to make a transfer to someone, when you want to send someone money, or when you want to buy Bitcoin, we turn on Face ID and you verify that you are you and you are the owner of the phone and then it goes.
01:00:50.000It's connecting with the people that you know.
01:00:52.000And that to me is the biggest difference with Twitter.
01:00:54.000It's connecting with the people you don't know.
01:00:56.000And you find interesting and it's around topics and stuff that you want to learn more about.
01:01:01.000When you saw Zuckerberg testifying and realizing how this platform is being used and what are the dangers of this, and then you see these senators that really don't know what the fuck the technology is.
01:01:17.000It really highlights how we're entering into this really, yeah, well not just a gap, a gap in the critical understanding of how these things work and what they are in terms of like how these really important politicians who are the ones who are making these decisions as to whether or not someone has violated laws or whether or not something should be curbed or regulated and they don't really even understand what they're talking about.
01:01:47.000Because they're not using it directly.
01:01:50.000They're not using it in the way that people are using it every single day, and they don't have the same experience that people have every single day.
01:02:00.000Regulatory 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 services might behave, but there's a role for the company to educate,
01:02:17.000and there's a role for the company to educate on what technology makes possible, whether it be I think we have a role to help educate and to help make sure that we're pushing towards what I think the job of a regulator is,
01:02:39.000which is number one, protect the individual.
01:02:41.000Number two, level the playing field and make sure that those two things are not What do you mean by level the playing field?
01:02:57.000Level the playing field so that an individual has the same opportunity that someone else might have or a company might have.
01:03:07.000So, okay, so like anybody can have a Twitter account?
01:03:10.000Anyone can have a Twitter account and, you know, they have at least, you know, an equal opportunity to contribute to it.
01:03:18.000And whatever they do with it will change the outcome.
01:03:21.000Some people might become very popular because they're saying stuff people want to hear.
01:03:25.000Some people won't see any following whatsoever because they're not adding anything original or interesting or different in terms of perspective.
01:03:36.000When you look at these kind of emerging technologies, not necessarily emerging anymore, established now, but still a new thing in relative terms of human history, where do you see this going?
01:03:52.000When you look at new technologies like augmented reality and things along those lines, do you see new possibilities and new things that make things even more complicated?
01:05:32.000Yeah, and I think a big part of it is, like, right now, like, how are we ensuring that there is more healthy contribution to that global conversation?
01:05:44.000I just think it's so critical that we start talking about the things that are facing all of us, not just one nation.
01:05:52.000I do think that that's where our current model really puts the world at a disadvantage because it incentivizes more of the echo chambers which lead to things like nationalism instead of taking the broader picture and looking at what's happening around the world to all people,
01:06:12.000What do you do, though, to balance the conversation or what responsibility do you think you have to balance the conversation in terms of the way conservatives view it versus the way liberals and progressives view it?
01:06:27.000Do you have a responsibility or is it just leave it up to the people and let them figure it out the same way they figured out hashtags and everything else?
01:06:35.000I think we have a responsibility to make it easier to do that.
01:08:56.000I've been in my last Netflix special about a woman who said a bunch of horrible things to me because I put a picture up on Instagram of some deer meat, and I wrote, this is some meat from a deer that liked to kick babies and was about to join ISIS. And then I wrote, hashtag vegan, which was a mistake,
01:09:12.000right, to write hashtag vegan, but the hashtag vegan people went fucking crazy and came after me because I entered into their timeline with meat.
01:11:10.000I think we, at least for us, we got more of our roots from AOA, Instant Messenger, and ICQ. ICQ. You remember the status message where you said, like, I'm in a meeting or I'm listening to this music or I'm watching a movie right now?
01:11:27.000And what we took from that was being able to, like, if you could do that from anywhere, not bound to a desk, but you could do that from anywhere, and you could do it from your phone, and you could just be roaming around and say...
01:11:36.000You know, I'm at Joe Rogan's studio right now.
01:11:46.000And then the other aspect of Instant Messenger was, of course, chat.
01:11:50.000So one of the things that the status would do is you might say, like, you know, I'm listening to Kendrick Lamar right now, and I might hit you up on chat and say, like, what do you think of the new album?
01:12:07.000That's the biggest difference, and that to me is what Twitter is.
01:12:11.000MySpace was, it was profiles, and people organized around these profiles and This network that developed between people, and that is Facebook.
01:12:24.000Facebook optimized the hell out of that, and they scaled the world.
01:12:33.000We started with that simple status, and then people wanted to talk about it, and we decided that it should be on the same surface.
01:12:40.000It shouldn't be subverdient to the status.
01:12:44.000It should be part of that flow, and that's what makes Twitter so fluid.
01:12:49.000Now, when you look at this sort of metamorphosis or this evolution between those initial social media, whether it's AOL, Instant Messenger, that eventually became like ICQ. What was that one that we would use, that gamers would use,
01:13:04.000that it was like a live stream sort of message board?
01:13:18.000You would go there and share files and stuff.
01:13:23.000I used to play a lot of online video games, and we'd play on teams, and we'd have teams go and play other teams, and he would use this sort of...
01:13:33.000It wasn't a message board because it was all in real time.
01:13:44.000Anyway, guys would go there and you could send people files through it and teams would go and meet and it would be a chat, like an online chat that would be in real time.
01:13:56.000Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of our roots in AOL and Messenger, but also like IRC, Internet Relay Chat, and Usenet, which were these old internet 70s technologies.
01:14:24.000I wonder, what is the next evolution of this?
01:14:28.000Because no one saw anything going from ICQ to Twitter.
01:14:32.000No one saw anything going from that to Instagram to where we're at right now where it really does flavor the conversation of our entire culture.
01:14:40.000Before it was just a thing that was happening that was happening on people's computers.
01:14:44.000Now it's a thing that's happening on people's computers and now phones and now your whole life.
01:14:53.000And I wonder, because everything does accelerate.
01:14:56.000Things constantly move forward and become more and more integrated into our life experience.
01:15:05.000And I wonder what is the next stage of this.
01:15:09.000I mean, like the secular trends and, you know, you look at technology and you look at technologies like blockchain, for instance, and I think, you know, we're moving to a world where anything created exists forever, that there's no centralized control over who sees what.
01:15:29.000That these models become completely decentralized and all these barriers that exist today aren't as important anymore.
01:15:43.000What do you think of something like Gab?
01:15:46.000Gab seems to be a response to the fact that some people are getting banned from other platforms and they're just allowing anybody to come on and say anything they want.
01:15:54.000The downside of that is, of course, the most horrible people are going to be able to say anything they want with no repercussions.
01:16:01.000The good side is anybody can say whatever they want.
01:16:21.000But it's just a question of the rules, and if you agree to the rules, then you sign up for the service, and if not, there will be other services.
01:16:32.000But you look at the trends, and I think certainly things become a lot more public.
01:16:42.000Certainly things become a lot more open.
01:16:44.000Certainly the barriers and the boundaries that we have in place today become less meaningful.
01:16:50.000And I think there's a lot of positives in that.
01:16:53.000And I also think there's a lot of danger that we need to be mindful of.
01:16:57.000Now, you as a CEO, as a guy who's running this thing, what has this experience been like for you?
01:17:03.000Because I've got to imagine that it wasn't anything that you predicted.
01:17:55.000These are what the technologies continue to allow.
01:17:59.000If we have to have all the answers around enforcement or policy, we're not going to serve We have aspirations to serve every single person on the planet, and we have aspirations to be the first consideration for the global public conversation.
01:18:17.000And if we're the bottleneck for all this, we're not going to reach those aspirations.
01:18:24.000It's just thinking deeply about how we might distribute more of this work and decentralize more of it and look at the platform itself and what we need to change to reach that reality.
01:18:38.000And I think we've got to look really deep and foundational.
01:18:41.000It goes back to your question on 140. One of the things that we saw was we shifted to 280 characters and this 140 characters is so sacred.
01:18:53.000It became this cultural thing and I was in love with it and so many people are in love with it.
01:19:00.000But one of the things we noticed as we moved to 280 is that The vast majority of tweets that are broadcast don't go above 140, even with that limitation raised.
01:19:11.000But where they do go above 140 is in replies.
01:19:15.000When people reply, they tend to go over the 140 character limit and even bump up into the 280 limit.
01:19:22.000And what we've seen it allow is just more nuance in the conversation.
01:19:27.000It allows people to give more context and kind of just get their experience on the table a bit more, whereas 140 did not allow that.
01:19:37.000So we have seen that increase the health of those conversations and the discussion.
01:19:43.000So it's stuff like that that we need to question and not hold so sacred.
01:19:47.000Is there any consideration to expanding it further?
01:20:06.000I 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.
01:21:02.000Totally, but the issue with going longer than that, it takes that real-time nature and the conversational flow out of it.
01:21:07.000So then we're delaying these tweets, and when you're watching UFC or you're watching Warriors basketball, A lot of the great Twitter is like, just like in the moment, just like, you know, it's the roar of the crowd.
01:21:19.000It's like, you know, looking across at someone you're in this virtual stadium with and just saying like, oh my god, that shot.
01:21:43.000If you're in the context of an NBA game, you want to be fast and you just want to be of the moment and you want to be raw.
01:21:50.000But if you're in the context of considering what the president just did or making a particular statement, then you probably need some more time.
01:22:00.000What's interesting to me is how few people use video.
01:22:03.000I thought when you guys have video on Twitter, I'm like, wow, a bunch of people are going to be making videos and putting those up on Twitter.
01:23:32.000It allows for a lot of serendipity to find something that...
01:23:35.000I probably wouldn't have seen unless I watched the whole damn video.
01:23:38.000So like the ability to clip something, the ability to like index in, I think is really critical.
01:23:44.000So it's not, to me, it's not about the format.
01:23:46.000It's about the use case and the context that you're in.
01:23:49.000Now, going back to the responsibility that you guys have, and you in particular, like, when this became what it is now, and when it became evident that it became this gigantic way of changing the way human beings communicate with each other,
01:24:50.000We need to make sure that everyone feels that they have an opportunity and a voice, and when you have these coordinated attacks, it's not fair.
01:24:59.000The second is around this concept of an echo chamber and a filter bubble.
01:25:04.000I don't feel personally good about that.
01:25:07.000I don't feel that we thought that through enough in the early days.
01:25:14.000I think we should have moved towards biasing the service towards topics and interests much, much sooner than we're now considering doing.
01:25:24.000Now when you have these considerations, when you take these actions, do you consult with psychologists or sociologists or historians or people that try to put in perspective for you what the ramifications of each individual move would be?
01:26:02.000And is this, over the long term, going to be a net positive for All humans, all humanity.
01:26:11.000Like, how do we balance the considerations of, you know, how we serve everyone?
01:26:16.000And like, how do we get down to something?
01:26:18.000How do we get down to a fundamental answer and a central answer?
01:26:21.000And that, to me, is where the real truth is, is when you can get to something foundational.
01:26:26.000But I like, you know, I like having conversations with as many people from as many different fields as possible and getting the perspective on it.
01:26:57.000You're not just looking at it as a tech company that has to remain profitable.
01:27:02.000And that is one of the more interesting things about tech companies to me.
01:27:07.000I mean, there's been a lot of criticism, maybe justified in some ways, that tech companies all lean left.
01:27:12.000But what is interesting to me is that name another corporation that willingly, of its own Choice takes that into consideration, that they want to serve the world and serve culture in a beneficial way,
01:28:46.000We need to improve a bunch of it, but it serves what we think are larger purposes, which is serving the public conversation.
01:28:56.000We want to see more global public conversations.
01:28:59.000We want our technology to be used to make the world feel a lot smaller, to help see what common problems we have before us and ideally how we can get people together to solve them faster and solve them better.
01:29:14.000You also seem to be embracing this responsibility that you're helping to evolve culture.
01:29:18.000And this is part of providing this method of communication.
01:32:08.000My dad listened to Rush Limbaugh and Hannity all the time.
01:32:11.000I found myself somewhere in the middle.
01:32:14.000But one of the things I appreciated, we had a ton of fights and arguments and yelling matches around the kitchen table, but I appreciated the fact that we could have them.
01:32:26.000And I felt safe to do so and I didn't feel like, I mean obviously they're my parents, but they weren't judging me because of what I said.
01:32:35.000They didn't force you to be a Republican or a Democrat.
01:32:38.000They didn't force me to think a particular way.
01:32:41.000I think they were good at least showing different perspectives even in this union that they have.
01:33:11.000I was formed through a lot of the ideals of the internet.
01:33:19.000I just fell in love with what it made possible.
01:33:21.000And I never, ever want to run afoul of those ideals and the removal of barriers and boundaries and the connection that we have because of it.
01:33:40.000I think often and reflect often about my role and the centralization of my role and of our company.
01:33:47.000And I want to figure out and help figure out how we can continue to add massive value and be an amazing business, which is us and will always be us, but at the same time,
01:34:05.000Be a participatory force in this greater good that the internet has really started.
01:34:13.000And it's not led by any one individual or any one company, and that's the beauty of it.
01:34:18.000And I want to make sure that we find our place in that and we can also contribute massively to it.
01:34:26.000It's just going to take a lot of work, a lot of introspection, and a lot of experimentation, a lot of making mistakes and failures, too.
01:34:33.000Well, and it's very encouraging that you have that attitude because a lot of people, I think, in a similar situation would try to control the narrative.
01:34:44.000They would try to reinforce their own particular perspective on things and try to get other people to adopt it or try to push it.
01:34:52.000And I think it's very important to just have this open discussion.
01:34:56.000And I think it's very important to review your own thoughts and ideas.
01:35:00.000And one of the best ways to do so is through the...
01:37:37.000There's some really exciting things coming out with Periscope that I think add a new dimension to what conversation looks like and how it is experienced and how it evolves.
01:37:50.000And those are the things I get really excited about.
01:37:53.000It's like how can we make conversation...
01:38:06.000And how do we bring new technology into it that just opens a door for an entirely new way of talking?
01:38:19.000And that's the thing that I think has been most educational to me about Twitter.
01:38:25.000As we talked about, we started with this idea of sharing what was happening around you, and then people told us what they wanted it to be, and it became this conversational medium.
01:38:41.000And it became a thing that was entirely new.
01:38:46.000And we observed it and we learned more and more of what it wanted to be.
01:38:51.000And as we get deeper and deeper that we're going to be surprised by some of the technologies that we thought would be used in this way.
01:38:57.000But it turns out that the massive use case and the resonant use case and the fundamental use case is going to be created right before our eyes by the people using it.
01:42:20.000Amazing technology and app I love called Square Wallet.
01:42:24.000And it allowed you to, you know, you link your credit card and you have all these merchants around you here in LA and you could walk up to a coffee merchant.
01:42:34.000And as you walked up, your name would pop up on the register.
01:42:37.000So you could say, like, I want a cappuccino and put it on Jack.
01:42:40.000And it just automatically charged your card.
01:42:42.000And it would only happen if you were within like two feet.
01:42:45.000We're using Bluetooth and geolocation and whatnot.
01:42:48.000But we had it for about three years and it just didn't take off and we shut it down and I kind of regret doing that but it also paved the way for another thing that I didn't want to give up on and that was the Cash App.
01:43:08.000A lot of people in the company wanted to shut down the thing.
01:43:12.000They saw it as Something that wasn't successful.
01:43:14.000And recently the team reached number one in the App Store in the United States.
01:43:20.000We were against all these incumbents like Venmo and PayPal and it finally clicked and it's just because we had the patience and the conviction around our belief.
01:43:34.000And the ethics behind it are really fantastic, too.
01:43:38.000We're really thankful for the Cash App, especially my friend Justin Wren, and his fight for the forgotten charity that every time you use the code word Joe Rogan, all one word, it all goes.
01:44:17.000But more importantly, they don't have access to things like rewards.
01:44:21.000You don't get rewards on a typical debit card or a credit card.
01:44:24.000So just going to your favorite place and getting an instant 10% off or whatever it is is out of reach for most people because the financial institutions don't enable that.
01:44:35.000And they won't even enable them to get in the door in the first place.
01:44:38.000Well, if people are listening to this on YouTube, you don't know what the fuck we're talking about.
01:44:41.000The Cash app has a thing called a Cash Card, which is a debit card that you get with it, and there's a thing called Boosts.
01:44:46.000And with Boosts, all you do is pick a Boost in the app and then use your Cash Card as a debit card, and you get these automatic discounts.
01:44:56.000And for folks with bad credit, there's no credit check.
01:44:59.000You can direct deposit your paycheck right into the app.
01:45:02.000And the fact that you guys do do things like support Fight for the Forgotten, and you're supporting UFC fighter Ray Borg's son, who's got some serious medical bills.
01:45:39.000One of our equivalent operating principles within cash and square is...
01:45:46.000How do we understand someone's struggle?
01:45:48.000How do we have the empathy for what they're struggling with?
01:45:51.000And when it comes to finance, they're struggling with a lot.
01:45:55.000Typically, they're struggling with a ton.
01:45:57.000What was the thought process with, 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.
01:46:03.000Are you guys going to consider other forms of cryptocurrency as well?
01:46:33.000The reason we enabled the purchasing of Bitcoin within the Cash App is, one, we want to learn about the technology and we want to put ourselves out there and take some risk.
01:46:46.000We're the first publicly traded company to actually offer it as a service.
01:46:49.000We're the first publicly traded company to talk to the SEC about Bitcoin and what that means.
01:47:16.000It allows us to move much faster around the world.
01:47:18.000And we thought we were going to start with how you can use it transactionally, but We noticed that people were treating it more like an asset, like a virtual gold.
01:47:33.000And we wanted just to make that easy, like just the simplest way to buy and sell Bitcoin.
01:47:41.000But we also knew that it had to come with a lot of education.
01:47:46.000It had to come with constraint because, you know, Two years ago, people did some really unhealthy things about purchasing Bitcoin.
01:47:55.000They maxed out their credit cards and put all their life savings into Bitcoin.
01:47:59.000So we developed some very simple restrictions and constraints.
01:48:04.000You can't buy Bitcoin on the Cash App with a credit card.
01:48:07.000It has to be the money you actually have in it.
01:48:10.000And we look for day trading, which we discourage and shut down.
01:48:15.000That's not what we were trying to build.
01:48:16.000That's not what we were trying to optimize for.
01:48:19.000We made a children's book explaining what Bitcoin is and where it came from and how people use it and where it might be going.
01:48:27.000So we really tried to take on the role of education and to have some very simple, healthy constraints that allowed people to consider what their actions are in the space.
01:48:41.000Now, when you have something like the Cash App, which is very much a disruptive technology in terms of decentralization of Of banks and currency and, you know, to have it where everything is going right at your direct depositing a paycheck right in the app if you so choose.
01:49:00.000And then you could also buy Bitcoin, which is another disruptive technology.
01:49:04.000I mean, this is another step towards this sort of new way of doing things.
01:49:12.000And is there pushback from any companies or is there...
01:49:36.000And what that means is that it's basically a distributed database where, you know, the source of truth can be verified at any point around the network.
01:49:46.000And you can see, you know, this annotation around how content or how around money like traveled.
01:49:54.000So you don't have to go to an institution to get the records.
01:50:02.000It's certainly threatening to certain services behind banks and financial institutions.
01:50:09.000It's Threatening to some governments as well.
01:50:12.000So I just look at this and like, how do we embrace this technology, not react to it in a, you know, more from a threat standpoint, but like, what does it enable us to do?
01:50:25.000And that's what we should be talking about right now is like, How our value shifts?
01:50:29.000And there's always really strong answers to that question.
01:50:32.000But if you're not willing to ask the question in the first place, you will become irrelevant because technology will just continue to march on and make you irrelevant.
01:50:40.000And it's the people that are growing up with this technology or born with the technology, only knowing that technology.
01:50:47.000Or are asking the tough questions of themselves that are going to be super disruptive to their business.
01:50:53.000And they're thinking about it right now and they're taking actions.
01:50:56.000And we're doing that at Square and we're doing that at Twitter.
01:51:00.000And that, to me, represents longevity.
01:51:03.000That represents our ability to thrive.
01:52:30.000Yeah, that excites me a lot about Twitter.
01:52:31.000If we want to get the world into a conversation, not a single conversation, but at least being able to see that global conversation, we've got to work on technologies that instantly translate.
01:52:44.000We've got to work on technologies that I can speak as I'm speaking right now and in real time people are hearing it in their context, in their language, in their dialect.
01:52:59.000And how it impacts not just communication like this, but music.
01:53:05.000And just like, you know, hip-hop and rap and, you know, it's amazing to think about where that can go and where that can take us.
01:53:14.000Yeah, and I think you and I are extremely fortunate to be alive right now during this time because I think it's one of the strangest and most unique times in human history.
01:53:33.000We're able through technologies like Twitter to at least see and acknowledge some of the issues that we're still facing that were probably in the dark before.
01:53:43.000And I think that's so critical to Making any sort of improvements for making any sort of evolution and for making it better for everyone on the planet.
01:53:58.000As uncomfortable as sometimes Twitter makes people feel, I think it is necessary to see those things and have conversations about them so that we can understand how we might move forward and how we might Really get at the biggest problems facing us all.
01:54:16.000And, you know, there's some huge ones.
01:54:18.000There's some huge ones right now that if we don't have, if we don't talk about it, like, it will drive us to extinction.
01:54:27.000And, like, it will threaten our ability to be a planet, to live on this planet.