The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1236 - Jack Dorsey

00:00:04.000 Three, two, one.

00:00:07.000 Boom.

00:00:08.000 Hello, Jack.

00:00:09.000 What's up?

00:00:10.000 Nice to meet you, man.

00:00:11.000 Nice to meet you, finally. 1.00

00:00:11.000 Yeah, keep this sucker like a fist from your face. 1.00

00:00:13.000 Got it. 1.00

00:00:14.000 First of all, dude, you started a company.

00:00:18.000 When you started Twitter, when you guys first started, did you have any idea?

00:00:21.000 There's no way you could have had any idea what it would be now.

00:00:24.000 No.

00:00:25.000 But one of the things I always try to emphasize with people when they're people like, oh, Twitter's crazy.

00:00:30.000 I'm like, how could it not be crazy?

00:00:32.000 There's never been anything like it before.

00:00:34.000 Like, imagine trying to predict...

00:00:37.000 The president of the United States uses Twitter to threaten other countries.

00:00:43.000 Yeah.

00:00:43.000 I mean...

00:00:44.000 Who the fuck saw that coming? 0.99

00:00:46.000 Nobody saw that coming. 1.00

00:00:47.000 Not us.

00:00:47.000 What did you think it was going to be when you first did it?

00:00:50.000 Well, you know, we were building this thing for ourselves.

00:00:53.000 And that's how...

00:00:54.000 That's how everything starts.

00:00:56.000 We wanted to use it.

00:00:57.000 We wanted to...

00:01:00.000 We wanted to, you know, stay connected with each other.

00:01:03.000 Like a group text.

00:01:04.000 Like a group text.

00:01:05.000 We loved our phones.

00:01:06.000 We loved technology.

00:01:08.000 We actually started this as a Hack Week project out of a failed company called Odeo.

00:01:14.000 It's podcasting.

00:01:16.000 I remember that.

00:01:16.000 I remember Odeo.

00:01:17.000 Super early on.

00:01:18.000 We were really creative folks, but we weren't that passionate about where podcasting was going in our particular domain.

00:01:28.000 We just got a lot of competition early on.

00:01:30.000 iTunes just released their podcast directory.

00:01:33.000 But we knew we wanted to work together.

00:01:37.000 We loved this idea of one-button publishing.

00:01:39.000 We loved this idea of collaboration.

00:01:41.000 We loved this idea of being anywhere and being able to share what was happening.

00:01:49.000 That was the idea.

00:01:51.000 I mean, that was it, and that's what we wanted it to be.

00:01:54.000 And I think the most beautiful and also sometimes uncomfortable aspect of Twitter is we really learned what it wanted to be.

00:02:05.000 And the people helped create it.

00:02:09.000 Like everything that we hold sacred now, the at symbol, the hashtag, the retweet, those were not invented by me or the company.

00:02:18.000 Those were things that we discovered, things that we discovered people using.

00:02:22.000 And we just...

00:02:24.000 We observed it and we noticed what they were trying to do.

00:02:28.000 They were trying to talk with one another.

00:02:30.000 They were trying to collect tweets around topics with a hashtag.

00:02:35.000 Has anybody figured out when the first use of hashtag something was created?

00:02:39.000 Yeah, it was actually our lead designer, Robert Anderson, who leads our design of the Cash App.

00:02:48.000 Hired him for Square later on.

00:02:51.000 But he was the first one.

00:02:53.000 He was actually communicating with his brother.

00:02:56.000 And he put at Buzz.

00:02:58.000 His brother's name is Buzz.

00:03:01.000 And it just kind of spread.

00:03:03.000 It wasn't in mass, but people were doing it.

00:03:06.000 But what was most interesting is not what they were doing, but what they wanted to do with it.

00:03:11.000 They wanted to address each other.

00:03:13.000 And that changed the company completely.

00:03:16.000 That 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.

00:03:28.000 Which came with it a lot of power and also a lot of issues as well.

00:03:32.000 Yeah, 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.

00:03:45.000 But to go on Twitter and to utilize that, it's interesting that this guy just did it just to contact his brother.

00:03:54.000 Yeah.

00:03:55.000 Well, that was the F symbol.

00:03:56.000 The hashtag was this guy, Chris Messina, and he was trying to tag around topics that he was tweeting about.

00:04:05.000 And again, that spread.

00:04:07.000 All we did was made it easier.

00:04:08.000 We made it more accessible.

00:04:09.000 We enabled everyone to do it.

00:04:12.000 With the at symbol, we made a page that collected all mentions of your name.

00:04:17.000 With 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.

00:04:26.000 So these things were just emergent behaviors that we didn't predict and they became the lifeblood of the service.

00:04:33.000 What'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.

00:04:40.000 There's just this one thing.

00:04:42.000 Like, how does that happen?

00:04:43.000 Where this one thing sort of gets adopted by everybody and takes over and then just becomes this overwhelmingly massive platform.

00:04:52.000 I mean, there's Vimeo, there's a few other video services, but nothing on the scale of YouTube.

00:04:59.000 And that's the same thing with Twitter.

00:05:01.000 There's nothing on the scale of distributing information in a quick, short, 280 character form like that.

00:05:07.000 I don't think we could plan for it.

00:05:09.000 I don't think we could necessarily build for that.

00:05:13.000 Someone 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.

00:05:24.000 And I think what's behind all that is that it hit something foundational.

00:05:32.000 It hit something essential.

00:05:35.000 And my co-founder Biz likes to say that Twitter can never be uninvented.

00:05:41.000 It's here.

00:05:41.000 It changed everything.

00:05:43.000 The use of it has been revolutionary.

00:05:45.000 And 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.

00:06:00.000 About text and the medium, you can actually get someone's raw thoughts and anyone in the world can see that instantaneously.

00:06:10.000 It becomes this subconscious.

00:06:11.000 It becomes this global consciousness and it gets to some really deep places in society and some of those places are pretty uncomfortable.

00:06:22.000 Well, it also gets to some really deep places psychologically.

00:06:25.000 There's a weirdness to it, right?

00:06:28.000 There's a weirdness to sending text, particularly anonymously, and there's so many accounts that are just an egg.

00:06:38.000 There's so many accounts where they're clearly designed.

00:06:41.000 Sometimes someone will tweet something mean to me, and I'm like, hmm, I wonder what this person's up to. 0.99

00:06:46.000 So I go to their site, and it's just them tweeting mean shit at people all day long. 0.99

00:06:50.000 It's probably some angry person at work and they're like, I'm just going to find people and fuck with them all day. 0.99

00:06:56.000 When 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? 0.85

00:07:07.000 There wasn't one moment.

00:07:09.000 There wasn't one moment that it just felt completely resonant.

00:07:16.000 It's unfolded into the next thing and the next use case and it just keeps surprising us with how people are using it.

00:07:26.000 You know, it definitely, recently, I think we've identified some of the areas of the service that we need to pay a lot more attention to.

00:07:37.000 Twitter is unique in that it has two main spaces.

00:07:42.000 One, which is your timeline, and those are the people that you follow.

00:07:46.000 And, you know, when you follow someone, they've earned that audience.

00:07:51.000 And then it has this other world where anyone can insert themselves into the conversation.

00:07:57.000 They can actually mention you, and you'll see that without...

00:08:01.000 Asking for it.

00:08:03.000 You can insert yourself into hashtags and to search.

00:08:09.000 And these are areas that people have taken advantage of.

00:08:13.000 And 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.

00:08:28.000 Now, 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?

00:08:38.000 How do you mitigate it?

00:08:41.000 What's the discussion?

00:08:42.000 Well, early on it was pretty surface level.

00:08:46.000 Like, how do we change some of the app dynamics?

00:08:50.000 But more recently, we're trying to go a lot deeper and asking ourselves the question, when people open Twitter, what are we incentivizing?

00:08:58.000 What are we telling them to do when they open up this app?

00:09:01.000 We may not explicitly be doing that, but there's something that we're saying without being as clear about it.

00:09:11.000 So what does the like button incentivize?

00:09:14.000 What does the retweet incentivize?

00:09:16.000 What does the number of followers and making that number big and bold incentivize?

00:09:25.000 I'm not sure if we should incentivize anything, but we need to understand what that is.

00:09:33.000 And I think right now we do incentivize a lot of echo chambers because we don't make it easy for people to follow interests and topics.

00:09:44.000 It's only accounts.

00:09:45.000 We incentivize a lot of outrage and hot takes.

00:09:50.000 Because of some of the dynamics in the service not allowing a lot of nuance in conversation earlier on.

00:10:01.000 Pseudonyms, this ability to not use your real name.

00:10:07.000 It 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.

00:10:28.000 So those are the things that we're looking at, and how do we enable more of the conversation to evolve?

00:10:35.000 How do we increase the credibility or reputation of accounts?

00:10:40.000 How do we identify credible voices within a particular domain?

00:10:46.000 Not 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?

00:11:01.000 And if you want to engage in a deeper conversation or just Ignore, mute, or block them.

00:11:07.000 But what is the conversation like while you're at work?

00:11:09.000 Like 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.

00:11:22.000 I mean, even more so than addresses.

00:11:24.000 It's very strange.

00:11:26.000 What's the conversation like in the office when you're trying to figure out, hey, what's our responsibility here?

00:11:31.000 How are we supposed to handle this?

00:11:33.000 I mean, in some ways, What Twitter is doing is it's really kind of, it's flavoring the public narrative.

00:11:44.000 It's flavoring the way we communicate with each other in our culture, worldwide.

00:11:50.000 Yeah, I mean, the conversation has definitely evolved.

00:11:53.000 I think in the past we just got super reactive.

00:11:56.000 We were reacting to all the negative things that we're seeing and that led to a lot of short-term thinking.

00:12:03.000 More recently, we've just looked much deeper.

00:12:06.000 We don't react to the present day.

00:12:09.000 We look for some of the patterns.

00:12:13.000 We have a company that is not just serving the people of this particular country, the United States.

00:12:21.000 This is global.

00:12:22.000 We have global leaders all around the world using us in different ways.

00:12:27.000 Some with a higher velocity.

00:12:30.000 Some recognize more of the power.

00:12:34.000 Some put out statements.

00:12:37.000 Some lead conversations.

00:12:38.000 But 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.

00:12:56.000 What 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?

00:13:09.000 What do we do about this?

00:13:11.000 Do we leave this up?

00:13:12.000 Do we recognize this as free speech?

00:13:15.000 Do we only take it down if they're calling for murder or hate speech?

00:13:21.000 How do you handle that?

00:13:23.000 Well, it evolves.

00:13:24.000 I mean, because like we first saw ISIS when the world saw ISIS, and we needed to change our policy to deal with it.

00:13:31.000 What was the initial reaction to it?

00:13:33.000 So 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?

00:13:41.000 Oh, it's a question.

00:13:42.000 Like, what are we going to do about this?

00:13:44.000 We haven't experienced this before.

00:13:46.000 We need to...

00:13:46.000 Nobody has.

00:13:47.000 I mean, you're essentially pioneers.

00:13:49.000 Yeah, but there are people who have experienced it in different forms, in different mediums.

00:13:55.000 So we reach out to our government partners, for instance, or law enforcement partners.

00:13:58.000 We reach out to our peer companies to ask if they're seeing the same things that we're seeing.

00:14:04.000 We 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.

00:14:28.000 So 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,

00:14:45.000 is we just haven't been open about our thinking process, what led to particular decisions, how our terms of service evolve.

00:14:57.000 As an area in our industry, it's a mess.

00:15:01.000 No one reads them.

00:15:03.000 You sign up for these services and you quickly hit accept.

00:15:08.000 And we expect people to read these rules of the road, but they haven't read them.

00:15:16.000 Have you ever read them?

00:15:17.000 I have read them.

00:15:18.000 You've read your own?

00:15:19.000 Have you ever read Facebook's?

00:15:20.000 I haven't read Facebook.

00:15:22.000 I'm not on Facebook.

00:15:23.000 You're not on it?

00:15:23.000 I'm not on Facebook.

00:15:24.000 Fuck Facebook, right? 1.00

00:15:26.000 No, just kidding. 1.00

00:15:27.000 What about Instagram?

00:15:28.000 You ever read theirs?

00:15:29.000 I was in the first 10 users of Instagram.

00:15:34.000 Really?

00:15:35.000 Kevin was an intern.

00:15:37.000 Kevin Systrom was an intern at Odeo.

00:15:40.000 And I was one of the first investors of Instagram and loved the service.

00:15:44.000 I don't think I've ever read their terms of service.

00:15:47.000 Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

00:15:48.000 Even you.

00:15:48.000 Even me.

00:15:49.000 But 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.

00:16:06.000 You go down, you scroll down, you see everything about violent threats and abuse and harassment and safety.

00:16:16.000 It's not that the company intended for that to be the order.

00:16:20.000 We just added things going on.

00:16:22.000 But even a read of that puts forth our point of view.

00:16:27.000 We're actually putting copyright infringement above the safety, the physical safety of someone.

00:16:33.000 So we need to relook at some of these things and how they've evolved and how they reacted.

00:16:38.000 But is it above just because it's listed second?

00:16:41.000 I mean, they're essentially all in the same one sheet.

00:16:44.000 They're on the one sheet.

00:16:45.000 When you bring it up, when you discuss it first, is that really critical?

00:16:49.000 They're all part of the terms of service.

00:16:51.000 Yeah, but I think that ordering matters.

00:16:53.000 What do we consider to be most important?

00:16:56.000 And we have to consider physical safety to be the one thing that we protect the most.

00:17:02.000 So physical threats.

00:17:04.000 Physical threats, doxing, anything that impinges on someone's physical safety.

00:17:10.000 This is an area where I don't think technology and services like ours have focused on enough.

00:17:18.000 We haven't focused on the off-platform ramifications of what happens online.

00:17:22.000 So what do you do, like, here's a good for instance.

00:17:26.000 This 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.

00:17:36.000 They want his name, they want his address, including Kathy Griffin.

00:17:39.000 Like, how do you handle something like that?

00:17:42.000 Because that's essentially a request for doxing.

00:17:45.000 Yeah, and that is a new vector that we haven't seen in mass.

00:17:50.000 These are the cases that bring up entirely new things.

00:17:53.000 So we have to study it.

00:17:54.000 We have to see how we reacted, what happened with the network.

00:18:00.000 But this goes back to the incentives.

00:18:03.000 We are incentivizing this very quick...

00:18:06.000 And it's taking away from some more of the considered work that we need to do to really diagnose what's happening in the moment.

00:18:15.000 And it's such an interesting case study to see how that evolved over...

00:18:22.000 Just 48 hours.

00:18:23.000 Yes.

00:18:24.000 That's one of the most fascinating news cycles or stories in the news cycle in quite a while because it's nuanced.

00:18:30.000 There's many different levels to it.

00:18:32.000 Yeah.

00:18:33.000 And a lot of like really knee-jerk reactions.

00:18:36.000 Totally.

00:18:38.000 We helped that.

00:18:40.000 How'd you help it?

00:18:41.000 Well, it's just that's how some of the dynamics of the service work.

00:18:44.000 But is that how some of the dynamics of the service, or is it the way people choose to use the service?

00:18:49.000 Like, if you are a thoughtful person, you wouldn't just...

00:18:53.000 Like, for instance, the original image that was distributed came from an account that's now banned.

00:18:59.000 And so it was discovered that that account was a troll account.

00:19:05.000 How does that happen?

00:19:07.000 And what was the thought process behind that?

00:19:10.000 Because the image that they posted was a legitimate image.

00:19:13.000 It really did happen.

00:19:15.000 It was a part of an actual occurring event.

00:19:18.000 So why did you ban the person or the troll account that put it up?

00:19:22.000 I don't know about this particular case, but it's likely that it was found...

00:19:28.000 There's a lot of what you see on the surface, the Twitter, and some of the actions that we take on the surface.

00:19:34.000 But where we spend a lot of our enforcement is actually what's happening underneath.

00:19:39.000 So in many cases, we have trolls or people, like the case that you mentioned, whose sole purpose is just to...

00:19:51.000 Harass or abuse or spread particular information.

00:19:56.000 And oftentimes these accounts might be connected.

00:19:58.000 Or they start one account, that gets banned, they start another account.

00:20:02.000 But we can actually see this through a network lens.

00:20:07.000 And we can actually see some of those behaviors.

00:20:09.000 So that might have been one of the reasons.

00:20:11.000 I'm not sure in that particular case.

00:20:16.000 How do you know?

00:20:17.000 Do you know because of IP addresses?

00:20:19.000 A variety of things.

00:20:21.000 It 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.

00:20:31.000 So we do have a lot of occurrences of...

00:20:34.000 Suspending or temporarily suspending accounts because of activities across accounts.

00:20:41.000 And that happens a ton.

00:20:43.000 But what I mean in that we're helping this right now is some of the incentives.

00:20:49.000 Just imagine...

00:20:51.000 Seeing 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.

00:21:00.000 So there has to be a way for us to incentivize a lot more considered and more nuanced introspection of what's going on.

00:21:11.000 Yeah, give everybody mushrooms.

00:21:12.000 That's probably the only way.

00:21:13.000 I don't know.

00:21:14.000 How are you going to get people to be more considerate?

00:21:16.000 I mean, this is essentially your engineering social behavior, right?

00:21:21.000 Yeah, providing more context.

00:21:23.000 Providing more context.

00:21:24.000 Like an example, let's take Brexit, for example.

00:21:27.000 Okay.

00:21:28.000 So 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.

00:21:42.000 Nigel Farage.

00:21:44.000 Yeah, and a lot of folks just will not follow accounts that have a completely different perspective or a different influence.

00:21:53.000 A number of people do.

00:21:54.000 Hopefully journalists do.

00:21:56.000 But most people won't do that work.

00:21:58.000 So this is the only tool we give people.

00:22:00.000 Follow an account.

00:22:02.000 If, 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.

00:22:22.000 We don't make it easy for anyone to do that.

00:22:26.000 Easy for anyone to follow the alternative...

00:22:29.000 Follow the hashtag, follow a topic, follow an interest.

00:22:33.000 And because of that, we help build an echo chamber and something that doesn't really challenge any perspective.

00:22:42.000 And not to say that we should force that upon people.

00:22:46.000 But we don't even make it easy for people to do in the first place.

00:22:49.000 The 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.

00:22:57.000 But that's work.

00:22:59.000 And most people just won't do the work.

00:23:01.000 They'll stay in their timeline.

00:23:02.000 They'll see what they need to see.

00:23:03.000 And 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.

00:23:13.000 And they see nothing of a different perspective on the exact same situation.

00:23:21.000 What's interesting to me is the difference between Twitter and Instagram.

00:23:26.000 Essentially, it's not just the photographs. 0.85

00:23:29.000 What's weird that has happened was there's shitty people on Instagram as well.

00:23:33.000 I mean, there's a lot of arguments and things along those lines, but they don't overwhelm the initial post.

00:23:41.000 Whereas with Twitter— It's on a different surface.

00:23:44.000 Yeah.

00:23:44.000 Instagram is a post.

00:23:46.000 I mean, it's a post.

00:23:48.000 It's not really eliciting conversation.

00:23:50.000 It's eliciting comments.

00:23:51.000 It's difficult to follow the conversations.

00:23:54.000 I don't think there is a conversation.

00:23:56.000 Well, sometimes there is.

00:23:57.000 Sometimes people are going back and forth about a particular subject that's discussed in the initial post, but it's not very clear.

00:24:05.000 Whereas with Twitter, it's only conversation.

00:24:09.000 It's only conversation.

00:24:10.000 But 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.

00:24:17.000 Yeah, it's super fluid and super messy, too.

00:24:21.000 But the thing is, on Instagram or any blog, you have this post, this statement, and you have comments underneath.

00:24:31.000 Whereas with Twitter, everything is on the same surface.

00:24:34.000 Right.

00:24:35.000 It's all one surface.

00:24:36.000 Yeah, my friend Kurt Metzger likes that about Facebook. 0.99

00:24:39.000 He 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. 1.00

00:24:49.000 He's like, and their shit looks just like my shit. 1.00

00:24:51.000 It's all together, all piled up. 1.00

00:24:53.000 He goes, but if I post something on Facebook, he goes, I have this whole thing. 0.64

00:24:57.000 Like, this is the original statement, and then underneath it, yeah, you fucking say whatever you want, but no one's reading that.

00:25:04.000 Like, they're reading the original initial post, and it's clear that there's a differentiation between the initial post and the secondary post.

00:25:11.000 Yeah, 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.

00:25:24.000 Our conversation evolves based on what we say.

00:25:26.000 We can interrupt one another.

00:25:29.000 We can completely change the subject.

00:25:32.000 I 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.

00:25:40.000 Whereas you can't do that in a post-comment model.

00:25:44.000 Yeah, it's also—text is so limited.

00:25:48.000 I mean, it's great for just getting out actual facts, but it's— Also thinking.

00:25:53.000 It's just so close to thinking.

00:25:55.000 Like, there's no composition.

00:25:56.000 Right.

00:26:02.000 You know, can be uncomfortable.

00:26:04.000 Like, I can compose my life on Instagram.

00:26:07.000 I can compose my thoughts within a Facebook post, and it can look so perfect.

00:26:15.000 But the best of Twitter is just super raw, and it's right to the thinking process.

00:26:21.000 And I just think that's so beautiful because it gets to consciousness.

00:26:25.000 It gets to something deeper, and I think that deeper— Well, how so?

00:26:29.000 How is it different than a post on Instagram or a post on Facebook?

00:26:32.000 The 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.

00:26:48.000 Yeah, and composing a letter and thinking about all the outcomes.

00:26:51.000 But oftentimes people do compose it as a letter and they break it up into separate 280 character posts.

00:26:57.000 What was the thought processing going from 140 to 280?

00:27:01.000 Because the one thing that I liked about 140 is that you can't be verbose.

00:27:05.000 You can't just ramble.

00:27:07.000 It's great for comics because it forces us to write jokes with economy of words.

00:27:12.000 Exactly.

00:27:12.000 We found a lot of resonance with journalists because of headlines.

00:27:16.000 We found a lot of resonance with comics because of The rhythm.

00:27:22.000 And we found a lot of resonance with hip-hop as well because of the bars and just the structure and the constraint allowed that flow.

00:27:30.000 The thinking was we looked at...

00:27:35.000 There are languages around the world and there are some languages like German, 140 characters you can't really say much.

00:27:43.000 Can't really say much at all.

00:27:45.000 Right, because the words are so long.

00:27:46.000 There are some languages like Japanese, 140 characters is 140 words.

00:27:51.000 And what was interesting about Japan was Japan is one of our largest countries.

00:27:58.000 We're bigger than Facebook there.

00:28:00.000 Are you not bigger than Facebook in America?

00:28:03.000 No. 1.00

00:28:03.000 What the fuck? 1.00

00:28:05.000 I don't even use Facebook. 0.99

00:28:07.000 Sorry, Facebook.

00:28:08.000 I don't either.

00:28:08.000 I mean, I use it in terms of if I post something on Instagram, it goes to Facebook.

00:28:12.000 But when I go to Facebook, it just seems like a lot of...

00:28:17.000 Well, this seems like Twitter, too.

00:28:18.000 A lot of arguing.

00:28:19.000 But what I... Twitter seems to be more fun, if that makes any sense. 0.93

00:28:24.000 Even 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. 0.59

00:28:32.000 Did you say GIFs or GIFs? 0.90

00:28:33.000 How do you say GIFs?

00:28:34.000 Does anybody know?

00:28:36.000 GIFs.

00:28:36.000 I say GIFs.

00:28:38.000 The jury's out.

00:28:39.000 A bunch of GIFs that are hilarious.

00:28:41.000 I was just mocking someone relentlessly.

00:28:45.000 That is one of my favorite things about Twitter. 0.91

00:28:48.000 When someone, like Donald Trump, posts something ridiculous, and then I'll go and I'll look at the responses. 0.97

00:28:52.000 I'm like, bah! 0.99

00:28:54.000 I don't even care.

00:28:55.000 It's a public conversation.

00:28:56.000 You can see how everyone reacts.

00:28:58.000 But the interesting thing about Twitter is there's not one Twitter.

00:29:03.000 It's like you have politics Twitter, which can be super toxic.

00:29:07.000 You have sports Twitter.

00:29:09.000 You have NBA Twitter.

00:29:10.000 You have MMA Twitter.

00:29:11.000 You have UFC Twitter.

00:29:13.000 You have K-pop Twitter. 0.99

00:29:14.000 You have eSports Twitter. 0.91

00:29:16.000 You have black Twitter.

00:29:17.000 That's Jamie's Twitter.

00:29:18.000 You have all these different Twitters and you have a completely different experience based on what Twitter you follow and what Twitter you participate in.

00:29:27.000 Some of them are like super engaging, super funny.

00:29:31.000 Some of them are you want to walk away from it.

00:29:34.000 Yeah, I got to a certain point where I couldn't read replies anymore.

00:29:39.000 Not that it's that toxic.

00:29:41.000 The vast majority of interactions I have with people are super positive.

00:29:45.000 Absolutely, more than 99%.

00:29:50.000 Didn'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.

00:30:00.000 I'm like I can't do this anymore.

00:30:02.000 It's just it's Overwhelming like I don't have the resources.

00:30:06.000 Yeah, 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.

00:30:15.000 Yeah And then you might miss something groovy.

00:30:18.000 I You might, but I also believe the most important things come back up.

00:30:21.000 What 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.

00:30:29.000 I would go through my mentions and people would post cool stories and then I would retweet those.

00:30:33.000 And so because people knew that I would retweet them, they would send me a lot of cool stuff.

00:30:36.000 So because of that, because of reciprocating, I got a lot of really cool stuff sent my way.

00:30:41.000 Yeah, you're pushing more out to expand the network.

00:30:44.000 Yeah, and I reinforced it.

00:30:47.000 I 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.

00:31:00.000 But then after a while, I'm like, this is a lot of time.

00:31:04.000 It's a lot of time.

00:31:05.000 So now, essentially what I do is I just post something and I just kind of like, ugh, I just walk away.

00:31:11.000 But that speaks to what we want to incentivize more.

00:31:15.000 We want more people contributing things back to the network, back to the public conversation.

00:31:21.000 And I know it doesn't feel like this today for most people.

00:31:26.000 My ideal is someone walks away from Twitter learning something, and they're actually learning something entirely new.

00:31:33.000 I think that happens a lot.

00:31:34.000 And it might be a new perspective.

00:31:35.000 That happens a lot.

00:31:36.000 It probably happens more often than we think.

00:31:37.000 Depending on who you follow.

00:31:39.000 Exactly.

00:31:39.000 It's all dependent on the Twitter you follow.

00:31:43.000 The health Twitter is amazing.

00:31:46.000 I followed Rhonda Patrick and a bunch of folks who are into sauna and Wim Hof and Ice Bass and Ben Greenfield.

00:31:58.000 And you just follow them and you just get all this new information about alternative views of how to stay healthy, how to live longer.

00:32:07.000 I can't find that anywhere else, in one place like that.

00:32:10.000 And then it's not just them broadcasting.

00:32:12.000 When they retweet something or when they tweet something, there's a whole conversation about it.

00:32:16.000 So, 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?

00:32:26.000 And I just go down this rabbit hole and I learn so much, but that's not the experience for everyone.

00:32:32.000 No.

00:32:33.000 Well, yeah, it's not the experience for everyone, and it's not really...

00:32:36.000 I don't think it's what everyone wants, either. 0.98

00:32:38.000 Sometimes people just like to go on there and talk shit. 0.97

00:32:40.000 I 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. 0.99

00:32:48.000 I mean, this is what...

00:32:50.000 It serves a purpose for them.

00:32:52.000 The thing that gets strange, though, is who's to decide.

00:32:58.000 There's this concept...

00:33:01.000 There'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.

00:33:13.000 Like anyone has access to the electric power, even if you're...

00:33:19.000 Even if you're a racist, you still can get electricity.

00:33:22.000 And some people think that you should have that same ability with something like Twitter, or the same ability with something like Instagram.

00:33:29.000 Obviously, we're in uncharted territory, and you are in uncharted territory.

00:33:35.000 No one has been there before.

00:33:37.000 So, who makes the distinctions?

00:33:39.000 When 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.

00:33:49.000 Maybe the person who's saying it feels like they need to express themselves and this is important to say.

00:33:53.000 And how do you decide whether or not this is a valid discussion or if this is, air quotes, hate speech, which is a...

00:34:02.000 You 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.

00:34:10.000 Yeah.

00:34:11.000 So the simple answer is we look at conduct.

00:34:14.000 We don't look at the speech itself.

00:34:15.000 We look at conduct.

00:34:16.000 We look at how the tool is being used.

00:34:20.000 You're right in that I think when people see Twitter, they see and they expect it to be a public square.

00:34:27.000 They 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.

00:34:36.000 Some of them might find it offensive and they leave.

00:34:39.000 The difference is there's also this concept of this megaphone, and the megaphone can be highly targeted now with Twitter as well.

00:34:49.000 So it's not the speech, it's how it's amplified.

00:34:53.000 So what do you do?

00:34:55.000 Let's say there's someone in the media.

00:34:57.000 Let's say it's a prominent feminist. 1.00

00:34:59.000 And then you have a bunch of people, or let's say just one person, and their Twitter feed is overwhelmingly attacking this prominent feminist. 1.00

00:35:08.000 Just constantly attacking her, calling her a liar, calling her this, calling her that.

00:35:11.000 When do you decide this is harassment?

00:35:14.000 When do you decide this is hate speech?

00:35:16.000 We look at the conduct.

00:35:18.000 This is a fictional account, right?

00:35:20.000 Fictional person we're talking about.

00:35:22.000 In this, for instance, what would dictate something that was egregious enough for you to eliminate them from your platform?

00:35:32.000 Well, that's a heavy action.

00:35:35.000 So that's a last resort.

00:35:37.000 But we look at the conduct.

00:35:39.000 We 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.

00:35:51.000 So we can look at that behavior.

00:35:53.000 We can look at How many times this person is being blocked or muted or reported?

00:36:00.000 And based on all that data, we can actually take some action.

00:36:05.000 But we also have to correlate it with the other side of that because people go on and they coordinate blocks as well.

00:36:13.000 And they coordinate harassment and they coordinate, I'm sorry, not harassment, but reporting.

00:36:19.000 Reporting a particular account to get it shut down and to take the voice off the service.

00:36:24.000 So these are the considerations we have to make, but it all starts with conduct.

00:36:30.000 And 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.

00:36:43.000 And there's a bunch of vectors.

00:36:44.000 People use retweet for that, the quote tweet for that a lot as well. 0.99

00:36:49.000 They'll quote tweet a tweet that someone finds and they'll say, look at this idiot, Twitter, do your thing. 0.96

00:36:55.000 And then just this mob starts and goes and tries to effectively shut that person down. 0.98

00:37:01.000 So there's a bunch of tools we can use.

00:37:05.000 The permanent suspension is the last resort.

00:37:08.000 One of the things that we can do is we can downrank the replies.

00:37:12.000 So Any of these behaviors and conduct that look linked, we can actually push farther down in the reply chain.

00:37:21.000 So it's all still there, but you might have to push a button to actually see it.

00:37:26.000 You might have to show more replies to actually see this harassing account or what might look like harassing language.

00:37:35.000 And is this manually done?

00:37:38.000 No, no, no.

00:37:38.000 This is all automated.

00:37:41.000 It's automated?

00:37:42.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:37:42.000 But how would you know?

00:37:43.000 A lot of the ranking and looking at amplification and looking at the network is automated.

00:37:47.000 Right.

00:37:48.000 In terms of downranking, is there a discussion as to whether or not this person's reply should be downranked?

00:37:53.000 How do you figure that out?

00:37:55.000 It's a machine learning and deep learning model.

00:37:58.000 So it's AI? It's AI and they learn.

00:38:01.000 We look at how these things are doing and where they make mistakes and then we improve it.

00:38:08.000 It's just constantly improving and constantly learning.

00:38:10.000 Does that feel like censorship to you?

00:38:12.000 Like automated censorship?

00:38:15.000 Because I mean, who is to decide, other than people, whether or not something is valid?

00:38:20.000 Well, we're not looking at the speech in this particular case.

00:38:24.000 We're looking at the conduct.

00:38:25.000 The conduct.

00:38:26.000 The conduct of, like, someone in fast velocity attacking someone else.

00:38:31.000 Okay.

00:38:31.000 Right?

00:38:31.000 So those are the things that our technology allows.

00:38:35.000 It changes the velocity.

00:38:36.000 It changes how, you know, to broadcast a message that someone didn't really ask for and didn't want to hear.

00:38:44.000 We don't touch...

00:38:45.000 If I follow Joe Rogan...

00:38:48.000 You'll see every single tweet.

00:38:49.000 We don't touch it.

00:38:50.000 But that's an audience that you earn.

00:38:53.000 But 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.

00:39:02.000 And all we're saying is we're going to look at moving the disruption down.

00:39:07.000 Not that it's hidden, but it's still there.

00:39:09.000 But you just see it a little bit farther down.

00:39:12.000 Like, there was a...

00:39:13.000 What was the instance with Ari?

00:39:15.000 I should text him right now.

00:39:16.000 Get him to answer me in real time.

00:39:18.000 But Ari Shafir got kicked off of Twitter because he said something to Burt. 0.99

00:39:22.000 Like, Burt, I'm gonna fucking kill you. 0.99

00:39:23.000 Burt Kreischer being our good friend. 1.00

00:39:25.000 All of us are good friends. 1.00

00:39:26.000 And he's like, you fucking dummy, I'm gonna kill you or something like that. 1.00

00:39:29.000 He took his record albums and he said he was gonna steal them and break them on. 1.00

00:39:32.000 He jokingly got mad.

00:39:33.000 Right, right, right.

00:39:34.000 That's Ari, though. 0.89

00:39:35.000 Burt was... 1.00

00:39:36.000 I think it was all bullshit, right? 1.00

00:39:38.000 I don't think Burt really stole his records. 0.99

00:39:40.000 Yeah, he gave them back to him eventually.

00:39:41.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:39:42.000 He's like, I'm gonna fucking kill you. 0.97

00:39:44.000 So 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. 0.98

00:39:52.000 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.

00:40:04.000 And those are the mistakes that we're going to make.

00:40:06.000 That's why we need an appeals process. 0.98

00:40:08.000 Or Bert needs to keep his fucking greasy hands off Ari's records. 1.00

00:40:11.000 Right? 0.99

00:40:13.000 That's probably not going to happen.

00:40:15.000 We need to make sure that we're reacting the right way.

00:40:19.000 Like, look, we're going to make mistakes.

00:40:22.000 The 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.

00:40:33.000 So a lot of our system doesn't Enforce or act unless these tweets are reported.

00:40:41.000 So we don't take suspension actions or removal of content actions unless it's reported.

00:40:49.000 The algorithms rank and order the conversation, but they don't take suspension actions.

00:40:55.000 They don't remove content.

00:40:56.000 They 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.

00:41:06.000 But we would like to move towards a lot more automated enforcement.

00:41:12.000 But more importantly, how do we amplify more of the healthier discussion and conversation?

00:41:24.000 Not removing it.

00:41:26.000 We're going to a world, especially with technologies like blockchain, that all content that exists, that is ever created, will exist forever.

00:41:36.000 You won't be able to take it down.

00:41:38.000 You won't be able to censor it.

00:41:40.000 It won't be centralized at all.

00:41:42.000 Our 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.

00:41:52.000 But if you look at the arc of technology, it's a given that anytime something is created, it's going to exist forever.

00:42:01.000 This is what blockchain helps enable down the line.

00:42:05.000 And we need to make sure that we're paying attention to that.

00:42:08.000 And 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.

00:42:23.000 Now when you say amplify the messages that you deem to be more positive, right?

00:42:29.000 Like, how do you decide that?

00:42:31.000 People decide it.

00:42:32.000 People decide it based on like, are they engaging in replies?

00:42:36.000 Are they retweeting it?

00:42:38.000 Are they liking it?

00:42:39.000 But sometimes it's really negative.

00:42:41.000 Like sometimes the people that are engaging in are engaging because they're attacking someone.

00:42:44.000 So is that valuable or is it just unfortunate?

00:42:51.000 It's valuable.

00:42:52.000 I mean, every signal is something that we can learn from and we can act on.

00:42:56.000 But it's going to constantly evolve.

00:43:00.000 These models that we have to build will constantly have to learn what the network is doing and how people are using it.

00:43:10.000 Our goal is healthy contribution back to the public conversation.

00:43:14.000 That is what we want.

00:43:15.000 We want to encourage people into more Bigger, informative, global conversations that they'll learn from.

00:43:25.000 Are 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?

00:43:43.000 It's radically changing the way people communicate with each other.

00:43:47.000 There'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.

00:43:56.000 It's unprecedented.

00:43:57.000 There's never been anything like that before.

00:43:59.000 And you setting up something that you think is going to be a group chat.

00:44:02.000 Do you remember the early days when you would say, like, at Jack is going to the movies?

00:44:08.000 That's how we would say it.

00:44:10.000 Joe Rogan is on his way to dinner.

00:44:12.000 That's how people would do it.

00:44:14.000 It was weird that somewhere along the line that morphed.

00:44:19.000 It morphed because that's what the world wanted to do with it.

00:44:22.000 That's where they wanted to take it.

00:44:24.000 And I just think it's so reflective of what the world is and in some cases what the world...

00:44:31.000 Wants 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.

00:44:45.000 It's really nothing ever been like this before no no and in and This mode of communicating will not go away.

00:44:55.000 It'll just get faster.

00:44:57.000 It 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.

00:45:14.000 I think about it because it's just a hugely significant thing.

00:45:23.000 But I also think about it because of podcasts, because podcasts are in a similar way. 0.93

00:45:29.000 Just no one saw it coming, and the people that are involved in it are like, what the fuck are we doing? 0.85

00:45:34.000 Like me.

00:45:35.000 I'm like, what am I doing?

00:45:36.000 Like, what is this?

00:45:37.000 Like, 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.

00:45:48.000 I clearly learned way more from doing this podcast than I ever would have learned without it.

00:45:53.000 No doubt about it.

00:45:54.000 Unquestionably. 0.98

00:45:55.000 But I didn't fucking plan this. 0.97

00:45:57.000 So 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. 0.98

00:46:06.000 I'm like, oh, great.

00:46:07.000 Well, I didn't want that.

00:46:08.000 I didn't want a responsibility to what I distribute.

00:46:11.000 I just wanted to be able to have a freak show.

00:46:13.000 Just talk to people. 0.97

00:46:16.000 There's certain people that I have on, whether it's Alex Jones or anyone that's controversial, where people will get fucking mad.

00:46:22.000 Why are you giving this person a platform?

00:46:24.000 I go, okay, hmm.

00:46:26.000 I didn't think about it that way, and I don't think that's what I'm doing.

00:46:28.000 I think I'm talking to people, and you can listen.

00:46:31.000 But it's giving that person a platform, because they'll say, well, no, they'll tone down, like, Milo Yiannopoulos.

00:46:36.000 That was one of the arguments people gave me.

00:46:37.000 He toned down his platform when he was on your show so you could get more people to pay attention to him.

00:46:42.000 Like, 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, 1.00

00:46:59.000 and people are like, what the fuck are you? 1.00

00:47:00.000 What are you talking about? 0.99

00:47:01.000 And that was a big part of why he's kind of been removed from the public conversation.

00:47:08.000 And then there's the discussion like, well, what is that?

00:47:11.000 What is removing someone from the public conversation?

00:47:13.000 If 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?

00:47:23.000 What is their responsibility to decide whether or not someone should or shouldn't be able to speak?

00:47:31.000 And 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.

00:47:39.000 YouTube does.

00:47:41.000 And it is a hugely significant discussion that is left to a very relatively small amount of people.

00:47:52.000 And this is why this discussion of what is social media?

00:47:56.000 Is it something that everybody has a right to?

00:47:58.000 Or is it something that should be restricted to only people that are willing to behave and carry themselves in a certain way?

00:48:08.000 I believe it's something that everyone has a right to.

00:48:11.000 Everyone has a right to.

00:48:12.000 But you still ban people.

00:48:13.000 Like, say, like, Alex Jones.

00:48:15.000 You guys were the last guys to keep Alex Jones on the platform.

00:48:18.000 You were the last ones.

00:48:19.000 And I believe you hung in there until he started harassing you personally, right?

00:48:23.000 No, no, no, no, no.

00:48:24.000 He did not...

00:48:25.000 He came to your house, he banged... 0.97

00:48:26.000 No.

00:48:29.000 He did very different things on our platform versus the others.

00:48:33.000 Ah, okay.

00:48:33.000 So 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.

00:48:44.000 Right.

00:48:44.000 And people, I think, would have assumed that we would just have followed suit, but he didn't violate our terms of service.

00:48:52.000 Right.

00:48:53.000 And...

00:48:55.000 Afterwards, he did.

00:48:56.000 And we have a policy, and if there's a violation, we take enforcement actions.

00:49:05.000 One might be asking the account holder to delete the tweet.

00:49:09.000 Another might be a temporary suspension.

00:49:12.000 Another might be a permanent suspension.

00:49:15.000 So let's use it in terms of him saying that Sandy Hook was fake.

00:49:20.000 He did not say that on the platform.

00:49:22.000 He did not say that on Twitter.

00:49:23.000 He only said that on his show.

00:49:25.000 I don't know all the mediums he said it in.

00:49:27.000 What did he do?

00:49:28.000 But what we're looking at is the conduct and what he did on our platform.

00:49:34.000 So what did he do on your platform that you all were in agreement that this is enough?

00:49:40.000 I'm not sure what the actual violations were, but we have a set number of actions and if they keep getting...

00:49:51.000 If an account keeps violating terms of service, ultimately it leads to permanent suspension.

00:49:59.000 And when all the other platforms were taking them off, we didn't find those.

00:50:02.000 We didn't find those violations and they weren't reported.

00:50:06.000 But 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.

00:50:18.000 Right.

00:50:19.000 Like, a good instance is what's going on with Patreon.

00:50:23.000 I'm sure you're aware of the Sargon of a Cod thing. 0.99

00:50:25.000 He 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...

00:50:35.000 Actually 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.

00:50:51.000 Even though he didn't do anything on their platform, that was egregious.

00:50:55.000 And also, they had previously stated that they were only judging things that occurred on their platform.

00:51:00.000 There'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.

00:51:15.000 You're eliminating him from being able to...

00:51:18.000 Make 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.

00:51:26.000 He views the world differently.

00:51:27.000 This is an opportunity for you to eliminate someone who you disagree with.

00:51:31.000 Yeah.

00:51:31.000 I 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.

00:51:43.000 That's where it gets weaponized.

00:51:44.000 And we also have to pay attention to where people are using it that put other folks in physical danger.

00:51:52.000 And that is where we need to be most severe.

00:51:55.000 But otherwise, everyone has a right to these technologies.

00:51:58.000 And I think they also have a right to make sure that they have a very simple and open read of the rules.

00:52:06.000 And we're not in a great state there.

00:52:09.000 Our rules and our enforcement can be extremely confusing to people.

00:52:12.000 What has been the one thing that came up that was perhaps the most controversial?

00:52:17.000 I know my friend Sam Harris was trying to get you guys to ban Donald Trump.

00:52:21.000 He was saying, if you follow your terms of service...

00:52:24.000 I just did a podcast with him, actually, as well.

00:52:26.000 It should come out today or tomorrow.

00:52:29.000 He's a fascinating guy, Sam Harris.

00:52:32.000 I love him to death.

00:52:32.000 But what he was trying to do was saying, hey, he's threatening nuclear war.

00:52:37.000 He's saying, hey, Korea, my bombs are bigger than your bombs.

00:52:41.000 What else does the guy have to do to get you to remove him from the platform?

00:52:46.000 When you guys saw that, what was your reaction to that?

00:52:49.000 Was there an internal discussion about actually banning the president of the United States?

00:52:54.000 Well, so two things there.

00:52:57.000 One, it was the context that presidents of this country have used similar language in different mediums.

00:53:06.000 They use it on radio.

00:53:08.000 They use it on television.

00:53:10.000 It's not just through Twitter.

00:53:12.000 And 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.

00:53:24.000 And we have to take that context into consideration.

00:53:27.000 So 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.

00:53:43.000 Where powerful figures or public figures might be in violation of our Terms of Service, but the tweet itself is of public interest.

00:53:54.000 There should be a conversation around it.

00:53:57.000 And that is probably the thing that people disagree with the most and where we have a lot of internal debate.

00:54:07.000 But we also have some pretty hard lines.

00:54:09.000 If we had a global leader, including the President of the United States, make a violent threat against a private individual, we would take action.

00:54:18.000 We always have to balance that with, like, is this something that the public has interest in?

00:54:25.000 And I believe generally the answer is yes.

00:54:28.000 It'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.

00:54:36.000 That informs voting.

00:54:38.000 That informs the conversation.

00:54:40.000 That informs whether we think they're doing the right job or we think that they should be voted out.

00:54:47.000 Well, it's very important to see how someone uses that platform.

00:54:51.000 And when someone uses it the way he uses it, And then becomes president and continues to use it that way.

00:54:57.000 That's when people are like, what?

00:54:59.000 He's been consistent.

00:55:00.000 I think he joined in 2009, 2012. Yeah.

00:55:04.000 You look at all of his tweets all the way back then and it's pretty consistent, too.

00:55:07.000 Yeah.

00:55:08.000 I mean, he likes to insult people on Twitter.

00:55:10.000 It's fun for him.

00:55:12.000 He does.

00:55:12.000 You know, it's just I never thought he would keep doing it.

00:55:14.000 I 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. 1.00

00:55:23.000 Fuck you, fuck the world, fuck this. 1.00

00:55:25.000 But no, he's just... 1.00

00:55:28.000 In one way, it's hilarious. 1.00

00:55:32.000 See, as a comedian, I think it's awesome because it's so hilariously stupid. 1.00

00:55:37.000 It'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? 0.99

00:55:52.000 But as a comedian, I am a gigantic fan of folly, almost against my better judgment. 0.98

00:56:01.000 I like watching disasters.

00:56:05.000 I like watching chaos.

00:56:07.000 When I see nonsense like that, I'm like, oh, Jesus.

00:56:10.000 I'm drawn like a moth to a flame.

00:56:12.000 But the other part of me is like, man, This sets a very bizarre tone for the entire country.

00:56:20.000 Because one of the things about Obama, like Obama or hate Obama, seems very measured, very articulate, obviously very well educated.

00:56:30.000 And 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.

00:56:48.000 I think that's good for us.

00:56:50.000 It's aspirational.

00:56:51.000 Yeah, it's like, look at that guy.

00:56:52.000 He talks better than me.

00:56:54.000 That's why he's the president.

00:56:55.000 When you see Trump, he doesn't talk better than me.

00:57:00.000 He doesn't use Twitter better. 1.00

00:57:04.000 He's just this fucking madman. 1.00

00:57:06.000 But isn't it important to understand that? 1.00

00:57:07.000 Yes.

00:57:08.000 And to see it?

00:57:08.000 Exactly.

00:57:09.000 Hopefully that informs opinions and actions.

00:57:12.000 100%.

00:57:12.000 That's my point.

00:57:13.000 That's my point.

00:57:14.000 It's like that this is this weird gray area where...

00:57:18.000 I think overall I definitely support your decision to not ban him for violating your terms of service.

00:57:24.000 Like, we need to know.

00:57:25.000 Yeah.

00:57:26.000 You know, and it's...

00:57:28.000 How do you know how many accounts are bots?

00:57:33.000 How do you know how many accounts are from a Russian troll farm?

00:57:36.000 Yeah.

00:57:37.000 Like, how do you know that?

00:57:38.000 So this is a real challenge and something that we're trying to wrap our heads around.

00:57:43.000 But, like, one of the things we're trying to do is, like, let's...

00:57:46.000 Scope 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.

00:57:56.000 Let's identify the humans first.

00:57:57.000 So how do you use that?

00:57:58.000 Because Face ID is not really available.

00:58:00.000 Is it available to you guys?

00:58:01.000 Do you just leak something that you shouldn't have told me?

00:58:03.000 No, no, no.

00:58:04.000 We haven't used it yet, but you can use it for things like, is this a human operating this?

00:58:10.000 For Apple Pay.

00:58:11.000 Yeah.

00:58:11.000 You can use it for that.

00:58:12.000 It's completely locked into the local device.

00:58:15.000 We 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.

00:58:27.000 And technology always has to change.

00:58:29.000 People will find ways around that and whatnot.

00:58:31.000 If 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.

00:58:45.000 People can script the app, can script the website and make it look very, very human.

00:58:50.000 So we're going after this problem first trying to identify the humans as much as we can, utilizing these technologies.

00:58:58.000 None of this is live right now.

00:58:59.000 These are considerations that we're making and trying to understand what the impact would be and how we might evolve it.

00:59:06.000 But 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.

00:59:19.000 Now, is Apple willing to share that with you?

00:59:22.000 I mean, when you're talking about biometrics, fingerprints, or face ID? No, no, no.

00:59:27.000 Not the data.

00:59:28.000 It's just the operating system verifies that...

00:59:31.000 That there's an individual that used it.

00:59:32.000 It's an individual and it's unlocking.

00:59:34.000 Right.

00:59:35.000 Like, you know, when you use the...

00:59:38.000 Our cache app uses this, right?

00:59:40.000 So Square's cache app...

00:59:42.000 When 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.

00:59:55.000 We don't get images of your face.

00:59:56.000 We don't see who you are.

00:59:58.000 Oh, that's what you want me to think.

01:00:00.000 I know what you're saying.

01:00:03.000 That's all locked down by the operating system, and that's what it should be.

01:00:06.000 Right, sure.

01:00:07.000 Has there ever been any consideration to not allowing people to post anonymously?

01:00:15.000 I like what you said earlier about journalists and whistleblowers.

01:00:19.000 That is critical.

01:00:20.000 So look at platforms that have a real names policy.

01:00:24.000 Look at Facebook.

01:00:25.000 Are the problems any different?

01:00:27.000 I don't know, because I don't go there.

01:00:29.000 But from what I understand, there's a lot of, still a lot of arguing there.

01:00:33.000 It's the same.

01:00:33.000 A lot of political arguing.

01:00:34.000 They're the same vectors, same patterns.

01:00:37.000 Aren't they older?

01:00:38.000 It's like older in general?

01:00:39.000 It seems, I also am not really hanging out there, but it seems a little bit older.

01:00:44.000 It's a lot of Grammys looking at pictures of their kids, grandkids and stuff.

01:00:48.000 That's what it was made for.

01:00:50.000 It's connecting with the people that you know.

01:00:52.000 And that to me is the biggest difference with Twitter.

01:00:54.000 It's connecting with the people you don't know.

01:00:56.000 And you find interesting and it's around topics and stuff that you want to learn more about. 0.96

01:01:01.000 When 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.

01:01:17.000 It 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.

01:01:44.000 No, I mean, there's...

01:01:46.000 Because so few people do.

01:01:47.000 Because they're not using it directly.

01:01:50.000 They'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.

01:01:56.000 And, you know, in terms of...

01:02:00.000 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 services might behave, but there's a role for the company to educate,

01:02:17.000 and 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,

01:02:39.000 which is number one, protect the individual.

01:02:41.000 Number two, level the playing field and make sure that those two things are not What do you mean by level the playing field?

01:02:57.000 Level the playing field so that an individual has the same opportunity that someone else might have or a company might have.

01:03:07.000 So, okay, so like anybody can have a Twitter account?

01:03:10.000 Anyone can have a Twitter account and, you know, they have at least, you know, an equal opportunity to contribute to it.

01:03:18.000 And whatever they do with it will change the outcome.

01:03:21.000 Some people might become very popular because they're saying stuff people want to hear.

01:03:25.000 Some people won't see any following whatsoever because they're not adding anything original or interesting or different in terms of perspective.

01:03:35.000 Where do you see this going?

01:03:36.000 When 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?

01:03:48.000 And does it get more intrusive?

01:03:50.000 Does it get deeper into our lives?

01:03:52.000 When 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?

01:04:05.000 I mean, yeah.

01:04:05.000 I mean, we just have to assume that we naturally use more and more technologies.

01:04:12.000 More and more things become open.

01:04:14.000 More and more things increase their velocity.

01:04:18.000 There's more communication, not less.

01:04:20.000 Like, this is not going away.

01:04:22.000 And it's just a question of what we do with it.

01:04:25.000 So where I want it to go and where I want Twitter specifically to go is, you know, I think...

01:04:33.000 It's existential right now that we have global conversations about some things that will become crisis.

01:04:42.000 Climate change being one of them.

01:04:44.000 There's no one nation state that's going to solve that problem alone.

01:04:47.000 Economic disparity being another.

01:04:49.000 The rise of AI and job displacement and just like us offloading decisions to these algorithms.

01:04:58.000 Those are things that...

01:05:00.000 That no one nation, no one community is going to solve alone.

01:05:03.000 It takes the entire world to do so.

01:05:05.000 So I want to make sure that we're doing our best to get people seeing these global conversations and ideally participating in them.

01:05:13.000 Because it helps us solve the problems faster.

01:05:17.000 I just believe that more open society allows us to solve problems much faster.

01:05:24.000 So you, in many ways, see Twitter as having some sort of a social responsibility in this discussion.

01:05:30.000 Totally, totally, totally.

01:05:32.000 Yeah, 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?

01:05:42.000 Yeah.

01:05:44.000 I just think it's so critical that we start talking about the things that are facing all of us, not just one nation.

01:05:52.000 I 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,

01:06:11.000 to all of humanity.

01:06:12.000 What 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?

01:06:23.000 Balance it.

01:06:24.000 Is there a responsibility?

01:06:27.000 Do 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?

01:06:35.000 I think we have a responsibility to make it easier to do that.

01:06:38.000 Easier?

01:06:38.000 How so?

01:06:39.000 Right now, it's just too hard.

01:06:40.000 Most people will not venture outside of their bubble.

01:06:45.000 They will not venture out.

01:06:46.000 They will not break their bubble.

01:06:47.000 Right.

01:06:49.000 Because right now on the surface, it's just so hard to do that.

01:06:53.000 I can only follow accounts.

01:06:55.000 And I have to look into, and just imagine, like, you know, trying to get an understanding of your own politics.

01:07:04.000 People can't just look at your bio.

01:07:06.000 They have to look through all your tweets, they have to listen to a bunch of your podcasts and whatnot.

01:07:10.000 And that's a bunch of work.

01:07:11.000 If we shift it more towards topics and interest, at least we have the potential to see a bunch more perspectives.

01:07:20.000 How do you do that, though?

01:07:21.000 The simplest thing is follow a hashtag.

01:07:24.000 Follow a topic.

01:07:25.000 Why can't you just follow Warriors Twitter or NBA Twitter?

01:07:32.000 Why do you have to go and find all the coaches and the players and the team?

01:07:37.000 We can do that.

01:07:39.000 We can help...

01:07:41.000 Yeah.

01:07:58.000 Yeah.

01:08:16.000 And again, I'm not saying that we should force that upon it, but it's not easy to even do that today.

01:08:21.000 The only tool we give you is finding and following the accounts.

01:08:26.000 But people search hashtags.

01:08:28.000 They do search hashtags, right?

01:08:29.000 They don't.

01:08:30.000 They stay in their timeline.

01:08:30.000 I mean, a small percentage of people, the people that really know Twitter know how to do that.

01:08:34.000 But most people, they follow an account and they stay in their timeline.

01:08:39.000 And their world is their timeline.

01:08:41.000 Hashtags can be corrupted too.

01:08:43.000 Totally.

01:08:44.000 They can be gamed.

01:08:45.000 They can be gamed.

01:08:46.000 And taken over.

01:08:47.000 I took over hashtag vegan cat.

01:08:49.000 Go to hashtag vegan cat now.

01:08:51.000 What is that?

01:08:51.000 That's a wrap.

01:08:52.000 That's mine now.

01:08:56.000 I'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,

01:09:12.000 right, to write hashtag vegan, but the hashtag vegan people went fucking crazy and came after me because I entered into their timeline with meat.

01:09:20.000 There it is.

01:09:21.000 Now if you get a hashtag vegan cat, it's all either pictures of, see like it says Joe Rogan, right?

01:09:28.000 Thank you, I haven't laughed that hard in a while, hashtag vegan cat. 0.98

01:09:32.000 It's people that are feeding their fucking cat vegan food and they're all dying. 0.98

01:09:36.000 And in the special I say, every cat looks like it's living in a house with a gas leak. 1.00

01:09:41.000 Like they're all like laying down like, where the fuck is the real food? 0.99

01:09:44.000 But this is real. 0.99

01:09:45.000 It generates a conversation.

01:09:47.000 But the thing is, if someone does something like that, you can pick a person, whatever that person is, whatever they're doing.

01:09:57.000 If they have a hashtag that they utilize all the time for their movement or whatever, someone could mock them and then use that.

01:10:04.000 And if it's a public figure or someone who's got a prominent voice, then all of a sudden that hashtag becomes...

01:10:10.000 People just take it over and start mocking them with that hashtag.

01:10:13.000 But it has to be done in mass.

01:10:14.000 I mean, it has to be coordinated.

01:10:15.000 And sometimes people figure out how to game the system and coordinate it and amplify that message in an unfair way.

01:10:21.000 And that's what our systems are trying to recognize.

01:10:24.000 How sick did that cat look? 1.00

01:10:26.000 The poor fucking cat. 1.00

01:10:28.000 That was a real one. 1.00

01:10:28.000 That was a real hashtag vegan cat. 1.00

01:10:30.000 Wow. 1.00

01:10:31.000 These poor bastards. 1.00

01:10:33.000 So when you look back at emerging social media, like we go all the way back to MySpace, right? 1.00

01:10:42.000 MySpace, you got Tom.

01:10:44.000 Tom was sitting there in your top eight, and people would post music that they liked, and it was never political.

01:10:52.000 It was often very surface.

01:10:55.000 For comics, it was a great way to promote shows, and it was an interesting way to see things.

01:11:03.000 But it was like the seed.

01:11:07.000 That became Twitter or Facebook or any of these others.

01:11:09.000 It was one of them.

01:11:10.000 I 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?

01:11:26.000 That was the inspiration.

01:11:27.000 And 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...

01:11:36.000 You know, I'm at Joe Rogan's studio right now.

01:11:40.000 That is cool.

01:11:41.000 I don't need my computer.

01:11:42.000 I'm not bound to this, chained to this desk.

01:11:45.000 I can do it from anywhere.

01:11:46.000 And then the other aspect of Instant Messenger was, of course, chat.

01:11:50.000 So 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?

01:12:02.000 But now, it's all public.

01:12:04.000 So it's just, everyone can see it.

01:12:07.000 That's the biggest difference, and that to me is what Twitter is.

01:12:11.000 MySpace was, it was profiles, and people organized around these profiles and This network that developed between people, and that is Facebook.

01:12:24.000 Facebook optimized the hell out of that, and they scaled the world.

01:12:31.000 We were something very different.

01:12:33.000 We started with that simple status, and then people wanted to talk about it, and we decided that it should be on the same surface.

01:12:40.000 It shouldn't be subverdient to the status.

01:12:44.000 It should be part of that flow, and that's what makes Twitter so fluid.

01:12:49.000 Now, 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,

01:13:04.000 that it was like a live stream sort of message board?

01:13:10.000 It was like...

01:13:12.000 For a while people were using TeamSpeak, but I don't know if that's when you were playing that's more recent.

01:13:16.000 It wasn't that.

01:13:16.000 It wasn't TeamSpeak.

01:13:18.000 You would go there and share files and stuff.

01:13:23.000 I 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...

01:13:33.000 It wasn't a message board because it was all in real time. 0.98

01:13:38.000 What the fuck was it called? 0.99

01:13:42.000 No. 1.00

01:13:43.000 All right, forget it.

01:13:44.000 Anyway, 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.

01:13:55.000 Yeah, it's...

01:13:56.000 Yeah, 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.

01:14:05.000 IRC is what I was talking about.

01:14:06.000 IRC? Yeah, that's what I was talking about.

01:14:08.000 So Internet Relay Chat is like this giant chat room that anyone can join and so range around topics.

01:14:15.000 What's interesting about that is you can see people typing, you see it occurring in real time.

01:14:20.000 You see it popping up in real time.

01:14:21.000 Yep.

01:14:24.000 I wonder, what is the next evolution of this?

01:14:28.000 Because no one saw anything going from ICQ to Twitter.

01:14:32.000 No 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.

01:14:40.000 Before it was just a thing that was happening that was happening on people's computers.

01:14:44.000 Now it's a thing that's happening on people's computers and now phones and now your whole life.

01:14:50.000 It's a very different influence.

01:14:53.000 And I wonder, because everything does accelerate.

01:14:56.000 Things constantly move forward and become more and more integrated into our life experience.

01:15:05.000 And I wonder what is the next stage of this.

01:15:09.000 I 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.

01:15:29.000 That these models become completely decentralized and all these barriers that exist today aren't as important anymore.

01:15:43.000 What do you think of something like Gab?

01:15:46.000 Gab 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.

01:15:54.000 The downside of that is, of course, the most horrible people are going to be able to say anything they want with no repercussions.

01:16:01.000 The good side is anybody can say whatever they want.

01:16:05.000 Yeah.

01:16:05.000 I haven't studied them too much, but I do know that they have taken action on accounts as well.

01:16:09.000 They have suspended accounts and they have a term of service as well.

01:16:13.000 What have they suspended accounts for?

01:16:15.000 I don't know.

01:16:16.000 It's probably conduct related.

01:16:18.000 It might be doxing.

01:16:20.000 Probably, right?

01:16:21.000 But 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.

01:16:32.000 But you look at the trends, and I think certainly things become a lot more public.

01:16:42.000 Certainly things become a lot more open.

01:16:44.000 Certainly the barriers and the boundaries that we have in place today become less meaningful.

01:16:50.000 And I think there's a lot of positives in that.

01:16:53.000 And I also think there's a lot of danger that we need to be mindful of.

01:16:57.000 Now, you as a CEO, as a guy who's running this thing, what has this experience been like for you?

01:17:03.000 Because I've got to imagine that it wasn't anything that you predicted.

01:17:08.000 No one predicted Twitter, right?

01:17:10.000 Yeah.

01:17:10.000 So, to all of a sudden have this responsibility.

01:17:13.000 Twitter changed everything.

01:17:14.000 And you're a young guy.

01:17:16.000 How old are you?

01:17:16.000 42. That's young.

01:17:18.000 To be in control of that much?

01:17:21.000 And to have it over the time of, what has it been?

01:17:25.000 11 years?

01:17:26.000 13 years.

01:17:27.000 We'll be 13 in March, yeah. 0.99

01:17:28.000 Yeah, so you were really fucking young. 0.97

01:17:30.000 Yeah. 0.94

01:17:31.000 Like, what has that been like for you?

01:17:33.000 It's been both beautiful and scary and uncomfortable and learning.

01:17:39.000 It's just been a ton of learning and evolving and it shows me every single day where I need to push myself and what I don't know.

01:17:50.000 I think a big part is just the realization that we're not going to be able to do this alone.

01:17:53.000 And I don't think we have to either.

01:17:55.000 These are what the technologies continue to allow.

01:17:59.000 If 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.

01:18:17.000 And if we're the bottleneck for all this, we're not going to reach those aspirations.

01:18:24.000 It'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.

01:18:38.000 And I think we've got to look really deep and foundational.

01:18:41.000 It 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.

01:18:53.000 It became this cultural thing and I was in love with it and so many people are in love with it.

01:19:00.000 But 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.

01:19:11.000 But where they do go above 140 is in replies.

01:19:15.000 When people reply, they tend to go over the 140 character limit and even bump up into the 280 limit.

01:19:22.000 And what we've seen it allow is just more nuance in the conversation.

01:19:27.000 It 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.

01:19:37.000 So we have seen that increase the health of those conversations and the discussion.

01:19:43.000 So it's stuff like that that we need to question and not hold so sacred.

01:19:47.000 Is there any consideration to expanding it further?

01:19:50.000 Not right now.

01:19:52.000 How about a million characters?

01:19:53.000 Well, we don't have edit tweets right now.

01:19:57.000 Do you think that that's good or bad?

01:19:59.000 Well, if you can't edit 140 characters, you're going to be really pissed off if you write a million characters and can't add those things.

01:20:05.000 You know what I would like?

01:20:06.000 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.

01:20:12.000 Yeah.

01:20:13.000 Like edit, but see the original.

01:20:15.000 We're looking at exactly that.

01:20:17.000 The reason we don't have it in the first place is we were born on SMS. We were born on text messaging.

01:20:23.000 When you send a text, you can't take it back.

01:20:24.000 So when you send a tweet, it goes to the world instantaneously.

01:20:29.000 You can't take it back.

01:20:30.000 But doesn't that exist anyway?

01:20:32.000 I mean, no matter what, if you send someone something, even on Instagram, people are going to know the original.

01:20:37.000 Yeah, they screenshot it and they do their thing.

01:20:40.000 But you could build it such that maybe we introduce a 5-second to 30-second delay in the sending.

01:20:48.000 And within that window, you can edit.

01:20:50.000 I'm going to need more time than that, dude.

01:20:53.000 If I fuck something up, someone has to tell me, hey man, you misspelled that word. 0.99

01:20:58.000 Ah shit, did I? God damn it. 1.00

01:21:00.000 Sometimes autocorrect gets you. 0.99

01:21:02.000 Totally, but the issue with going longer than that, it takes that real-time nature and the conversational flow out of it.

01:21:07.000 So 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.

01:21:19.000 It's like, you know, looking across at someone you're in this virtual stadium with and just saying like, oh my god, that shot.

01:21:26.000 Can you believe it?

01:21:27.000 But isn't clarity more important?

01:21:30.000 Because you're not going to give up.

01:21:31.000 It depends on the context.

01:21:32.000 Yeah.

01:21:32.000 You're still going to have the ability to communicate quickly.

01:21:35.000 Yeah.

01:21:36.000 But you also have the ability to clarify.

01:21:38.000 That's where we need to really pay attention.

01:21:41.000 Because...

01:21:43.000 If 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.

01:21:50.000 But 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.

01:21:58.000 And we can be dynamic there.

01:22:00.000 What's interesting to me is how few people use video.

01:22:03.000 I 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.

01:22:10.000 And it's not.

01:22:11.000 It's not that often.

01:22:12.000 It depends on who you follow.

01:22:13.000 It's huge for some aspects of Twitter.

01:22:16.000 It's less so in others.

01:22:18.000 What aspects is it huge for?

01:22:20.000 A lot of sports.

01:22:22.000 I mean, we see a lot of just the replays and the recaps.

01:22:25.000 Oh, right.

01:22:26.000 For sure.

01:22:27.000 Aspects of a particular shot that people want to comment on.

01:22:31.000 I think it's dangerous for us to focus too much on the medium.

01:22:35.000 Whether it be images or GIFs or video, it's more about the conversation around it.

01:22:40.000 That's what we want to optimize for.

01:22:41.000 It's definitely very popular for sports and folly and there's a bunch of animal attack videos.

01:22:52.000 Yeah, Nature is Metal is a good one.

01:22:54.000 And Hold My Beer, that's another good one.

01:22:59.000 I mean, it's all videos.

01:23:00.000 But what I meant was people making a video, talking about something.

01:23:04.000 This is what I was trying to say.

01:23:06.000 What I think is this and that and blah, blah, blah, you don't see a lot of that.

01:23:10.000 And I thought maybe that would be something that people would adopt more.

01:23:13.000 It's a different speed.

01:23:14.000 I think the consumption of video, I mean, you see this in the technology right now.

01:23:19.000 People are subtitling every single video because people might be in an environment where they can't turn the audio on.

01:23:26.000 Or a video, I have to scrub through to see what's interesting.

01:23:30.000 With text, I can just see it.

01:23:32.000 It allows for a lot of serendipity to find something that... 0.99

01:23:35.000 I probably wouldn't have seen unless I watched the whole damn video.

01:23:38.000 So like the ability to clip something, the ability to like index in, I think is really critical. 0.96

01:23:44.000 So it's not, to me, it's not about the format.

01:23:46.000 It's about the use case and the context that you're in.

01:23:49.000 Now, 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,

01:24:08.000 was there ever any regret?

01:24:11.000 Or was there ever a moment where you're like, what the fuck have I gotten myself into?

01:24:16.000 I mean, I'm always reflective of where I am and what I'm doing.

01:24:25.000 I think the biggest has been around twofold.

01:24:31.000 One, how the dynamics of the service allow it to be weaponized in order to silence someone else or to drive them off the service entirely.

01:24:41.000 Which goes against the entire concept of free speech and free participation.

01:24:46.000 We just can't stand for that.

01:24:50.000 We 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.

01:24:59.000 The second is around this concept of an echo chamber and a filter bubble.

01:25:04.000 I don't feel personally good about that.

01:25:07.000 I don't feel that we thought that through enough in the early days.

01:25:14.000 I think we should have moved towards biasing the service towards topics and interests much, much sooner than we're now considering doing.

01:25:24.000 Now 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?

01:25:37.000 I try to read as much as possible.

01:25:40.000 I try to talk to as many people as possible just to get a completely different perspective.

01:25:44.000 Is there any internal disagreement about actions that you take?

01:25:47.000 Oh yeah, there's always debate.

01:25:49.000 There's always debate.

01:25:50.000 But I think my role is to ask questions and make sure, like, what is our goal here?

01:25:56.000 What are we trying to do?

01:25:59.000 And that evolves.

01:26:00.000 That evolves.

01:26:02.000 That evolves.

01:26:02.000 And is this, over the long term, going to be a net positive for All humans, all humanity.

01:26:11.000 Like, how do we balance the considerations of, you know, how we serve everyone?

01:26:16.000 And like, how do we get down to something?

01:26:18.000 How do we get down to a fundamental answer and a central answer?

01:26:21.000 And that, to me, is where the real truth is, is when you can get to something foundational.

01:26:26.000 But 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.

01:26:35.000 So I ask questions all the time.

01:26:37.000 It's interesting the way you're phrasing this, too, that you are looking at this as a method to save or to help people, to serve people.

01:26:47.000 You're looking at this as a way that you can benefit society.

01:26:52.000 Society can benefit from your platform, can benefit from this platform.

01:26:55.000 This ability to communicate.

01:26:57.000 You're not just looking at it as a tech company that has to remain profitable.

01:27:02.000 And that is one of the more interesting things about tech companies to me.

01:27:07.000 I mean, there's been a lot of criticism, maybe justified in some ways, that tech companies all lean left.

01:27:12.000 But 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,

01:27:31.000 regardless of profit.

01:27:33.000 I mean, because you're not really selling anything, right?

01:27:37.000 You guys have a platform.

01:27:38.000 Obviously, it's financially viable, but you're not selling things.

01:27:43.000 Well, I mean, we do our models based off people's attention.

01:27:48.000 And they're paying us with their attention.

01:27:51.000 And that's extremely valuable and something that we need to really, really honor.

01:27:57.000 But I agree with you.

01:27:59.000 I mean, like, look at Tesla.

01:28:03.000 I just listened to the recent earnings call and one of the things that Elon said was, look, there are two reasons for Tesla.

01:28:12.000 Number one is to advance different sources of energy and more renewable sources of energy.

01:28:23.000 Because it's a fundamental and existential crisis that's facing all humanity.

01:28:27.000 And number two is to advance autonomy because it'll save lives and give people time back.

01:28:33.000 And then you start talking about how to make that possible.

01:28:38.000 And that's where our business comes in.

01:28:41.000 How do we make that possible?

01:28:44.000 We have a great business.

01:28:46.000 We need to improve a bunch of it, but it serves what we think are larger purposes, which is serving the public conversation.

01:28:56.000 We want to see more global public conversations.

01:28:59.000 We 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.

01:29:14.000 You also seem to be embracing this responsibility that you're helping to evolve culture.

01:29:18.000 And this is part of providing this method of communication.

01:29:25.000 It's helping to evolve culture.

01:29:27.000 And this is something that is really only applicable to tech companies in some strange way.

01:29:35.000 And it's weird that so many of them Share this.

01:29:40.000 Like, I was personally a little weirded out when Google took out, don't be evil.

01:29:46.000 Like, that was a big part of their operating model.

01:29:49.000 Did they take that out?

01:29:49.000 Yes!

01:29:50.000 Yes!

01:29:51.000 Right?

01:29:52.000 Make sure, I don't want to get sued.

01:29:54.000 I'm pretty sure they removed that from, what would you call that?

01:29:59.000 Their operational directive?

01:30:03.000 Like, what is...

01:30:03.000 It was in the code of conduct.

01:30:05.000 Code of conduct.

01:30:06.000 And it's not there anymore, right?

01:30:08.000 It's an article that says they removed the clause.

01:30:11.000 It's kind of a weird thing to tell people not to be evil.

01:30:15.000 It's weirder to take it out once you've already said it. 0.99

01:30:19.000 It's way weirder to say, ah, fuck it, we were wrong. 0.99

01:30:21.000 There's another way of saying that, though. 0.99

01:30:23.000 They changed it to do the right thing.

01:30:25.000 Oh, well, what does that mean? 0.97

01:30:27.000 The fuck does do the right thing mean? 0.97

01:30:29.000 Do the right thing so you can make more money? 0.99

01:30:32.000 You know?

01:30:33.000 Like, hey, we want to make money, we'll do the right thing.

01:30:35.000 It makes more money.

01:30:36.000 I mean, that's why this openness is so critical.

01:30:41.000 To me, the public conversation is so important is we can talk about stuff like that.

01:30:46.000 And there will be companies forming today that look at objectives and mandates like that and base their whole culture around it.

01:30:56.000 And is that the right idea?

01:30:57.000 I don't know, but if we're not talking about it, we won't be able to answer that question.

01:31:00.000 What's also interesting because Google is so all-encompassing, right?

01:31:05.000 You have Gmail.

01:31:06.000 You have Android.

01:31:08.000 I mean, they are the number one operating system for mobile phones in the world on top of being a search engine.

01:31:16.000 There's so much involved in that company.

01:31:19.000 And again, like almost all tech companies, they heavily lean left.

01:31:24.000 And because they had that don't be evil as a part of their code of conduct, it seemed like something that was a good idea to have.

01:31:33.000 And it sort of defined what I was talking about, that tech companies are uniquely progressive.

01:31:39.000 Right.

01:31:41.000 Yeah, I mean, I don't know what makes that.

01:31:46.000 I think, no matter what, the internet allows for a very healthy skepticism of nearly everything.

01:31:56.000 I'm from Missouri.

01:31:59.000 It's a show-me state.

01:32:00.000 Are you really from Missouri?

01:32:01.000 Yeah, I'm from St. Louis, Missouri.

01:32:03.000 We're all skeptics.

01:32:04.000 My mom was a Democrat. 0.81

01:32:06.000 My dad was a Republican.

01:32:08.000 My dad listened to Rush Limbaugh and Hannity all the time.

01:32:11.000 I found myself somewhere in the middle.

01:32:14.000 But 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.

01:32:26.000 And 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.

01:32:35.000 They didn't force you to be a Republican or a Democrat.

01:32:38.000 They didn't force me to think a particular way.

01:32:41.000 I think they were good at least showing different perspectives even in this union that they have.

01:32:52.000 I don't know.

01:32:52.000 It developed a skepticism in me that I think is healthy.

01:32:59.000 And I have a lot of skepticism of companies like ours and leaders like me.

01:33:06.000 I think that's right.

01:33:07.000 I think that's right and people should.

01:33:09.000 And we...

01:33:10.000 I mean...

01:33:11.000 I was formed through a lot of the ideals of the internet.

01:33:19.000 I just fell in love with what it made possible.

01:33:21.000 And 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.

01:33:40.000 I think often and reflect often about my role and the centralization of my role and of our company.

01:33:47.000 And 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,

01:34:05.000 Be a participatory force in this greater good that the internet has really started.

01:34:13.000 And it's not led by any one individual or any one company, and that's the beauty of it.

01:34:18.000 And I want to make sure that we find our place in that and we can also contribute massively to it.

01:34:25.000 I think we can.

01:34:26.000 It'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.

01:34:33.000 Well, 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.

01:34:44.000 They would try to reinforce their own particular perspective on things and try to get other people to adopt it or try to push it.

01:34:52.000 And I think it's very important to just have this open discussion.

01:34:56.000 And I think it's very important to review your own thoughts and ideas.

01:35:00.000 And one of the best ways to do so is through the...

01:35:02.000 Put it out there.

01:35:02.000 Yeah, put it out there.

01:35:03.000 Put it out there and have other people review it.

01:35:05.000 Peer review is a great process.

01:35:07.000 And it works.

01:35:09.000 That's the way this podcast has evolved more than probably anything.

01:35:12.000 Yeah, that's the thing.

01:35:14.000 I mean, you did this because you want to learn from people and the platform that you've created, millions get to learn from it as well.

01:35:22.000 And that's just so amazing.

01:35:24.000 I learn from your podcast all the time.

01:35:29.000 That's what technology makes possible.

01:35:31.000 But with that power also comes ramifications.

01:35:35.000 And if we're not talking about the ramifications and at least being open about what we know and what we don't know.

01:35:40.000 And I think we state and post a lot more of what we know rather than what we don't know.

01:35:47.000 And that is so interesting.

01:35:49.000 Why don't you guys steal Don't Be Evil? 1.00

01:35:52.000 Put that in your own shit. 1.00

01:35:53.000 Fuck you, Google. 1.00

01:35:54.000 I don't know if that's going to help anything. 1.00

01:35:56.000 What is that telling our employees to do?

01:35:58.000 Don't be evil.

01:35:59.000 It's real simple. 1.00

01:36:01.000 Don't be a dick. 0.99

01:36:02.000 Yeah, I mean, how do we get deeper and just seeing more conversation around what is quote-unquote evil? 0.99

01:36:11.000 Have you guys considered expanding your influence in other venues? 0.98

01:36:15.000 Google started off as a search engine, now it's fucking everything.

01:36:19.000 Have you guys considered doing something similar? 0.93

01:36:22.000 I think we probably did too much of that early on, and that's what led to a bunch of issues from a corporate standpoint.

01:36:29.000 We're just trying to do too much, too many times.

01:36:32.000 I don't know.

01:36:33.000 We were trying to be everything to everyone.

01:36:36.000 We had a video thing and we were looking at gaming stuff and messaging and it lost focus of what we were good at.

01:36:48.000 What we're good at is conversation and what we're good at is public conversation.

01:36:53.000 We now have, as a company, we have just such an amazing focus on what that means and how that evolves.

01:37:00.000 And there's some really cool things that we can do there.

01:37:03.000 We have this app called Periscope.

01:37:05.000 And one of the things that we're discovering is a lot of people are using it to podcast.

01:37:11.000 A lot of people are using it to share their thoughts and these people come in and they chat and have a conversation.

01:37:19.000 Yeah.

01:37:37.000 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 is experienced and how it evolves.

01:37:50.000 And those are the things I get really excited about.

01:37:53.000 It's like how can we make conversation...

01:37:56.000 And how do we make it feel more live?

01:38:03.000 How do we make it feel more electric?

01:38:06.000 And how do we bring new technology into it that just opens a door for an entirely new way of talking?

01:38:19.000 And that's the thing that I think has been most educational to me about Twitter.

01:38:25.000 As 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.

01:38:38.000 It became this interest networked.

01:38:41.000 And it became a thing that was entirely new.

01:38:46.000 And we observed it and we learned more and more of what it wanted to be.

01:38:51.000 And 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.

01:38:57.000 But 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.

01:39:07.000 Now did you guys acquire Periscope?

01:39:10.000 We acquired Periscope.

01:39:11.000 And what was the thought process when you were acquiring it?

01:39:14.000 We like the live nature of it.

01:39:16.000 We like the broadcast aspect.

01:39:19.000 Why keep it as Periscope?

01:39:21.000 Why not have it be like Twitter Live?

01:39:23.000 There's a specific community on Periscope, and I think it's interesting from an experimentation standpoint.

01:39:32.000 We can play with ideas there.

01:39:35.000 Scott Adams, I think, uses it better than anybody.

01:39:38.000 Yeah, he's really good at it.

01:39:40.000 And he's one that I think has figured out...

01:39:44.000 You know, just the knack behind it.

01:39:47.000 You know, he starts every one of them with this simultaneous sip of coffee.

01:39:54.000 So he gets his listeners and his viewers engaged right away and then he just goes on.

01:40:00.000 And then every now and then he'll, you know, look at the comments and riff off them.

01:40:04.000 He lets people build up too.

01:40:06.000 Like he'll announce that he's going on and then wait a little while, say hello to some people.

01:40:10.000 Then once a bunch of people are in the room, then he starts talking.

01:40:13.000 Yeah, and I find that so interesting because that is the future of conversation.

01:40:19.000 It's looking at the patterns.

01:40:20.000 It's looking at what people are trying to do with the thing.

01:40:23.000 And then you build technology around it.

01:40:24.000 And that becomes the next big thing.

01:40:27.000 And we just have to hone our power of observation, hone our power of connecting the dots and looking at all the patterns.

01:40:36.000 What's the question behind the question?

01:40:38.000 What's the statement behind the statement that they're making?

01:40:40.000 And if we can get good at Understanding some of those fundamental, essential things, then we've reached...

01:40:46.000 We've at least created the probability that most people in the world will find it useful and find it valuable.

01:40:53.000 Joey Diaz is the other person that uses Periscope better than anybody alive, but he just gets high.

01:40:58.000 I haven't seen his.

01:40:58.000 He just gets baked.

01:41:00.000 He just gives you a morning...

01:41:02.000 What does he call it?

01:41:02.000 Morning bong hit?

01:41:03.000 The morning joint.

01:41:04.000 The morning joint.

01:41:04.000 Yeah, he'll smoke a joint or smoke a bowl in the morning and then just sort of...

01:41:09.000 Let everybody know what's going on in his mind.

01:41:12.000 Doing something in sync with more people is interesting.

01:41:16.000 We've had some folks who are interested in doing meditations through Periscope.

01:41:23.000 Oh, that's a great idea.

01:41:24.000 If you look at the surface level, you can't imagine anything more boring than watching someone meditate.

01:41:29.000 But if you're actually meditating with them, there's something powerful about it.

01:41:34.000 What can we do to improve that experience?

01:41:37.000 What about people using it for group workouts?

01:41:40.000 Is anyone doing that?

01:41:41.000 I'm sure it's happening.

01:41:42.000 I haven't seen it personally, but I'm sure it's happening.

01:41:45.000 How much more people do you have on Twitter than Periscope?

01:41:47.000 A lot.

01:41:49.000 It's one of those things that I personally just have a lot of conviction around.

01:41:54.000 I have a lot of belief in the format.

01:41:59.000 Every now and then we don't have instant hits.

01:42:01.000 It just requires a lot of patience.

01:42:04.000 And we need to really learn what it wants to be.

01:42:07.000 And sometimes that takes time.

01:42:08.000 And I think oftentimes, I've certainly done this, we shut down things a little bit too early.

01:42:17.000 We did this at Square.

01:42:20.000 Amazing technology and app I love called Square Wallet.

01:42:24.000 And 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.

01:42:34.000 And as you walked up, your name would pop up on the register.

01:42:37.000 So you could say, like, I want a cappuccino and put it on Jack.

01:42:40.000 And it just automatically charged your card.

01:42:42.000 And it would only happen if you were within like two feet.

01:42:45.000 We're using Bluetooth and geolocation and whatnot.

01:42:48.000 But 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.

01:43:04.000 For four years it was just a slog.

01:43:08.000 A lot of people in the company wanted to shut down the thing.

01:43:12.000 They saw it as Something that wasn't successful.

01:43:14.000 And recently the team reached number one in the App Store in the United States.

01:43:20.000 We 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.

01:43:33.000 Yeah, it's a great app, too.

01:43:34.000 And the ethics behind it are really fantastic, too.

01:43:38.000 We'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.

01:43:47.000 $5 goes to that.

01:43:50.000 And they've built two wells for the Pygmies in the Congo, and they've raised thousands of dollars and are building more wells right now.

01:43:55.000 It's really, really cool.

01:43:56.000 We're really, really happy about that.

01:43:57.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:43:58.000 I love it.

01:43:59.000 I think it's...

01:44:00.000 It's a great way to save money, too.

01:44:01.000 I mean, when you can save 10% at Whole Foods, I mean, that's real.

01:44:06.000 Well, the other thing is, like, the population that we serve Typically are underserved by banks or unbanked entirely.

01:44:14.000 Yes.

01:44:15.000 We are their bank account.

01:44:17.000 Right.

01:44:17.000 But more importantly, they don't have access to things like rewards.

01:44:21.000 You don't get rewards on a typical debit card or a credit card.

01:44:24.000 So 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.

01:44:35.000 And they won't even enable them to get in the door in the first place. 0.98

01:44:38.000 Well, if people are listening to this on YouTube, you don't know what the fuck we're talking about. 0.67

01:44:41.000 The 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. 0.96

01:44:46.000 And 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.

01:44:54.000 And they're real discounts.

01:44:55.000 Yep.

01:44:56.000 And for folks with bad credit, there's no credit check.

01:44:59.000 You can direct deposit your paycheck right into the app.

01:45:02.000 And 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.

01:45:11.000 It's really, really cool.

01:45:12.000 Yeah, I'm really proud of it.

01:45:14.000 I'm really proud of the team.

01:45:15.000 It's a very small team, but they're doing some big things.

01:45:17.000 Well, I hear a lot of good things about it, too.

01:45:19.000 I've run into people on the street that tell me they use it, and they're very happy about it.

01:45:22.000 So it's nice to see, again, an emerging technology that's profitable, but yet also has a really good set of ethics behind it.

01:45:32.000 Do you have don't be evil in the cash apps?

01:45:35.000 No.

01:45:36.000 Maybe we should take it.

01:45:37.000 It's open.

01:45:38.000 It's free now.

01:45:39.000 One of our equivalent operating principles within cash and square is...

01:45:46.000 How do we understand someone's struggle?

01:45:48.000 How do we have the empathy for what they're struggling with?

01:45:51.000 And when it comes to finance, they're struggling with a lot.

01:45:55.000 Typically, they're struggling with a ton.

01:45:57.000 What 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.

01:46:03.000 Are you guys going to consider other forms of cryptocurrency as well?

01:46:08.000 Not right now.

01:46:10.000 So back to the internet.

01:46:11.000 I believe the internet will have a native currency.

01:46:14.000 Really?

01:46:14.000 It'll have a native currency.

01:46:15.000 And I don't know if it's Bitcoin.

01:46:16.000 I think it will because just given all the tests it's been through and the principles behind it, how it was created.

01:46:25.000 It was something that was born on the internet, that was developed on the internet, that it was tested on the internet.

01:46:31.000 It is of the internet.

01:46:33.000 The 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.

01:46:46.000 We're the first publicly traded company to actually offer it as a service.

01:46:49.000 We're the first publicly traded company to talk to the SEC about Bitcoin and what that means.

01:46:55.000 And it made us uncomfortable.

01:46:58.000 We had to really understand what was going on.

01:47:02.000 And that was critical and important.

01:47:04.000 And then the second thing is that we would love to see something become a global currency.

01:47:12.000 It enables more access.

01:47:14.000 It allows us to serve more people.

01:47:16.000 It allows us to move much faster around the world.

01:47:18.000 And 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.

01:47:33.000 And we wanted just to make that easy, like just the simplest way to buy and sell Bitcoin.

01:47:41.000 But we also knew that it had to come with a lot of education.

01:47:46.000 It had to come with constraint because, you know, Two years ago, people did some really unhealthy things about purchasing Bitcoin.

01:47:55.000 They maxed out their credit cards and put all their life savings into Bitcoin.

01:47:59.000 So we developed some very simple restrictions and constraints.

01:48:04.000 You can't buy Bitcoin on the Cash App with a credit card.

01:48:07.000 It has to be the money you actually have in it.

01:48:10.000 And we look for day trading, which we discourage and shut down.

01:48:15.000 That's not what we were trying to build.

01:48:16.000 That's not what we were trying to optimize for.

01:48:19.000 We 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.

01:48:27.000 So 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.

01:48:41.000 Now, 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.

01:49:00.000 And then you could also buy Bitcoin, which is another disruptive technology.

01:49:04.000 I mean, this is another step towards this sort of new way of doing things.

01:49:12.000 And is there pushback from any companies or is there...

01:49:17.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:49:18.000 I mean, like, you just look at, like, some of the major banks and their consideration around Bitcoin.

01:49:23.000 They all love blockchain because of the efficiencies it can create for their business and potentially new business lines.

01:49:29.000 But, you know, I think there is a...

01:49:31.000 Explain blockchain for people who don't know what we're talking about.

01:49:34.000 Blockchain is a distributed ledger.

01:49:36.000 And 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.

01:49:46.000 And you can see, you know, this annotation around how content or how around money like traveled.

01:49:54.000 So you don't have to go to an institution to get the records.

01:49:57.000 Yeah, there's no centralized check.

01:49:58.000 There's no centralized control over it.

01:50:00.000 And I think that is threatening.

01:50:02.000 It's certainly threatening to certain services behind banks and financial institutions.

01:50:09.000 It's Threatening to some governments as well.

01:50:12.000 So 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?

01:50:23.000 And where does our value shift?

01:50:25.000 And that's what we should be talking about right now is like, How our value shifts?

01:50:29.000 And there's always really strong answers to that question.

01:50:32.000 But 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.

01:50:40.000 And it's the people that are growing up with this technology or born with the technology, only knowing that technology.

01:50:47.000 Or are asking the tough questions of themselves that are going to be super disruptive to their business.

01:50:53.000 And they're thinking about it right now and they're taking actions.

01:50:56.000 And we're doing that at Square and we're doing that at Twitter.

01:51:00.000 And that, to me, represents longevity.

01:51:03.000 That represents our ability to thrive.

01:51:06.000 And we've got to push ourselves.

01:51:08.000 We've got to make ourselves uncomfortable.

01:51:09.000 And we've got to disrupt what we held sacred and what we think is.

01:51:15.000 Is success today.

01:51:16.000 Because otherwise it's not going to be bigger than what we have today.

01:51:18.000 Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

01:51:20.000 And I think that cryptocurrency, to me, represents one of the more interesting discussions on the internet.

01:51:26.000 Totally.

01:51:26.000 What is money?

01:51:27.000 And why are we agreeing that it's these pieces of paper that the Federal Reserve prints out?

01:51:32.000 Totally.

01:51:32.000 It's a fascinating time in technology because that, to me, was one of the last big...

01:51:45.000 Centralized, nationalized instruments is currency, is money.

01:51:49.000 And when you think about the internet as a country, as a market, as a nation, it's going to have its own currency.

01:51:58.000 But what's interesting about the internet as a nation, it's the whole world.

01:52:02.000 It is the whole world.

01:52:04.000 So the world gets one currency.

01:52:06.000 It gets one thing to communicate in.

01:52:08.000 And that to me is just so freeing and so exciting.

01:52:11.000 Yeah, I'm very excited by it.

01:52:14.000 And I'm also very excited that the fact that it's only been around for such a short period of time.

01:52:17.000 Yeah, 10 years.

01:52:18.000 And it's become a part of the global conversation.

01:52:21.000 Yeah, it's got a good brand.

01:52:22.000 I also think that it's going to open up the door to potential universal languages.

01:52:28.000 Totally.

01:52:30.000 Yeah, that excites me a lot about Twitter.

01:52:31.000 If 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.

01:52:44.000 We'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.

01:52:53.000 That is amazing.

01:52:55.000 That is so exciting.

01:52:56.000 And just how that evolves...

01:52:59.000 And how it impacts not just communication like this, but music.

01:53:05.000 And 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.

01:53:14.000 Yeah, 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.

01:53:23.000 Totally.

01:53:24.000 I don't think there's ever been a time where things have changed so radically, so quickly.

01:53:27.000 Totally.

01:53:28.000 Yeah, and I feel, you know, we...

01:53:33.000 We'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.

01:53:43.000 And 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.

01:53:58.000 As 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.

01:54:16.000 And, you know, there's some huge ones.

01:54:18.000 There'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.

01:54:27.000 And, like, it will threaten our ability to be a planet, to live on this planet.

01:54:36.000 I agree.

01:54:37.000 Thank you.

01:54:38.000 Thanks for everything, man.

01:54:39.000 Thanks for being here.

01:54:40.000 Thanks for doing what you're doing.

01:54:41.000 Thanks for having the attitude that you have.

01:54:42.000 I really, really appreciate it.

01:54:43.000 Thank you, Joe.

01:54:44.000 My pleasure.

01:54:45.000 Bye, everybody!

The Joe Rogan Experience - February 01, 2019

Joe Rogan Experience #1236 - Jack Dorsey

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Transcript