Wired: Jack Dorsey Was the Soul of Twitter

Wired explains in a recent article why Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey was the “soul of Twitter” and appeared to be truly dedicated to his vision for the platform.

Wired writes in an article titled “Jack Dorsey Was the Soul of Twitter,” about the journey that former Twitter CEO has undertaken throughout his career. Dorsey founded Twitter in 2006 but was forced out of his CEO role in 2008 by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and board member Fred Wilson. But Dorsey was quick to get to work on another project. This marked the beginning of what would become the company called Square, a payments processor still helmed by Dorsey that is now worth nearly $100 billion.

Jack Dorsey at Bitcoin conference ( Joe Raedle /Getty)

Wired writes:

Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold, but in the next few years, Jack Dorsey was presented with a lavish feast, served not only piping hot but probably vegan as well. Or maybe keto. Not only did that weird app turn into Square—now valued at nearly $100 billion—but in 2011, Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo, who had replaced Williams, tapped Dorsey to be the company’s part-time product guru. Four years later, Dorsey stepped in for Costolo to once again become Twitter’s leader. The man who invented the service and changed the world by giving instant voice to anyone, for better or worse, was finally back in charge of his creation.

Wired notes that Dorsey was not quick to censor the platform, much to the anger of many far-left employees and users who wished to see a harsher stance taken on across the platform. Ultimately Dorsey made the decision to blacklist President Donald Trump, but resisted the the leftists within his organization to some degree up to that point.

Wired writes:

In terms of policing Twitter’s content, Dorsey was the Hamlet of Silicon Valley, acknowledging the problems but hesitating to take the severe measures required to address them. Every woman who posts something even mildly controversial must expect a blizzard of horrid misogynistic responses. Only relatively recently has Twitter taken serious responses to its troll problem. And while Donald Trump is a problem that no one has figured out how to deal with, Dorsey allowed the misinformer-in-chief to use Twitter as his bullhorn for too long. (On the other hand, Dorsey’s call to permanently ban Trump after January 6 was gutsier than Facebook’s timid “suspension.”)

In other respects, Dorsey quite delightfully broke unspoken rules about the way a CEO is supposed to behave. Weirdness abounds in corporate suites, but seldom is displayed so brazenly. There was his diet. His beard. His nose ring. And his obsessions: denim, perambulating, and, more recently, crypto.

Just one day after Dorsey was replaced as the CEO of Twitter by the company’s former CTO, Parag Agrawal, the platform has banned the sharing of any images or videos of people without their explicit consent. The far-left company stated: “The misuse of private media can affect everyone, but can have a disproportionate effect on women, activists, dissidents, and members of minority communities.”

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