Jack Dorsey

Cancel Culture

Jack Dorsey Regrets Role in Centralizing the Internet

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey takes partial responsibility for internet centralization. In a statement issued via Twitter, the former CEO said, “the days of usenet, irc, the web…even email (w PGP) …were amazing. Centralizing discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet. I realize I’m partially to blame, and regret it.”

A decade before banning then sitting U.S. President Donald Trump, Twitter described itself as the “free speech wing of the free speech party.” As the platform banned more people for seemingly ideological reasons, the commitment to free speech was not paramount, with Dorsey’s successor as CEO, Parag Agrawal, maintaining that the company’s “role is not to be bound by the First Amendment.”

Dorsey signaled an affinity with Twitter’s original stance on free speech, saying the banning of President Trump set, “a precedent I feel is dangerous: the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation.”