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United States Jack Dorsey says he's 'partially to blame' for centralization of the Internet
Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former chief executive at Twitter TWTR, said he is “partially to blame” for the centralization of the Internet.
Dorsey, chief executive at Block Inc. SQ, tweeted on Saturday about his nostalgia for the Internet in its early days. “The days of usenet, irc, the web…even email (w PGP)…were amazing. centralizing discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet,” he wrote. “I realize I’m partially to blame, and regret it.”
Dorsey stepped down as chief executive at Twitter in November.
Dorsey’s post was made two days before it was disclosed on Monday that Elon Musk, chief executive at Tesla, acquired 73.49 million shares, or a 9.2% passive stake of Twitter, becoming the biggest shareholder of the platform.
Read: Twitter stock rockets after Elon Musk takes stake valued at more than $3 billion
Less than two weeks ago, Musk criticized Twitter for what he said a failure to adhere to its principle of freedom of speech, and said he was “giving serious thoughts” to building a new social media platform.
“People are tired of corporations controlling the world’s information,” said Nader Al-Naji, head of the DeSo foundation, which builds decentralized social blockchain DeSo. “Jack and Elon tweeting about freedom of speech and open-source algorithms is a clear signal the tides are turning,” AI-Naji wrote to MarketWatch in an email.
Gritt Trakulhoon, lead investment analyst at crypto asset manager Titan, said he is “extremely curious” to what Dorsey’s next moves are, or what his visions will be for the new era of decentralized internet. “We can’t be sure what that will look like, but my guess is it will probably involves going back to the roots, using open-source protocols instead of platforms,” Trakulhoon wrote.
Trakulhoon is also watching Musk’s potential move at Twitter, “as he vows to make it a bastion of free speech and censorship resistant, which both favor a more decentralized internet.”
“What I worry with Elon is that he may start to preach things like Dogecoin over Bitcoin, and criticizes things like NFTs, Ethereum, smart contract platforms,” Trakulhoon said. Such moves is “detrimental to a decentralized and free narrative,” according to Trakulhoon.
In January, Musk lambasted Twitter’s feature of allowing users to add non-fungible tokens as their profile pictures.
Meanwhile, as a vocal supporter for meme token Dogecoin DOGEUSD, +2.59%, Musk said the crypto is better suited for transactions than bitcoin BTCUSD, +0.52%, and pushed Tesla to accept dogecoin as payment for some merchandise.
Dogecoin spiked almost 10% to $0.157 on Monday, before it fell back to $0.144, according to CoinDesk data.
