FULL TRANSCRIPT: Joe Rogan Experience #1236 – Jack Dorsey

FULL TRANSCRIPT: Joe Rogan Experience #1236 – Jack Dorsey (transcribed by Sonix)

Joe Rogan: Three, two, one, boom. Hello, Jack.

Jack Dorsey: What’s up?

Joe Rogan: Nice to meet you, man.

Jack Dorsey: Nice to meet you, finally.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Keep this sucker like a fist from your face.

Jack Dorsey: Got it.

Joe Rogan: Good. First of all. dude, you started a company. When you started Twitter, when you guys first started, did you have any idea — Well, there’s no way you could have had any idea what it would be now.

Jack Dorsey: No.

Joe Rogan: But one of the things I always try to emphasize with people when people are like, “Twitter’s crazy,” I’m like, “How could it not be crazy? There’s never been anything like it before.” Like imagine trying to predict the kind of impact — The President of the United States uses Twitter to threaten other countries.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: I mean, who the fuck saw that coming?

Jack Dorsey: Not us.

Joe Rogan: Nobody saw that coming.

Jack Dorsey: Not us.

Joe Rogan: What did you think it was going to be when you first did it?

Jack Dorsey: Well, you know, we were building this thing for ourselves. And that’s how everything starts. We wanted to use it. We wanted to stay connected with each other. We-

Joe Rogan: Like a group text almost?

Jack Dorsey: Like a group text. We loved our phones. We loved technology. We actually started this as a hack week project out of a failed company called Odeo. It’s podcasting.

Joe Rogan: I remember that. I remember Odeo.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah. Super early on. We were really creative folks, but we weren’t that passionate about where podcasting was going in our particular domain. And we just got a lot of competition early on. iTunes just released a podcast directory, but we knew we wanted to work together. We knew we love this idea of one-button publishing, we love this idea of collaboration, we love this idea of being anywhere, and being able to share what was happening. That was the idea. I mean, that was it, and that’s what we wanted it to be.

Jack Dorsey: And I think the most beautiful and, also, sometimes, uncomfortable aspect of Twitter is we really learned what it wanted to be, and the people helped create it. Like everything that we hold sacred now, the @ symbol, the hashtag, the retweet, those were not invented by me or the company. Those were things that we discovered, things that we discovered people using. And we just observed it, and we noticed what they were trying to do. They’re trying to talk with one another. They were trying to collect tweets around topics with a hashtag.

Joe Rogan: Has anybody figured out when the first use of hashtag something was created?

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, it was actually our Lead Designer, Robert Anderson, who leads our design of the Cash App. Hired him for a Square later on, but he was the first one. He was actually communicating with his brother, and he put @Buzz. His brother’s name is Buzz. And it just spread. It wasn’t en masse, but people were doing it.

Jack Dorsey: But what was most interesting is not what they’re doing, but what they wanted to do with it. They wanted to address each other. And that changed the company completely. 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, which, came with it, a lot of power and, also, a lot of issues as well.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. The use of hashtags, like looking up #Fryfest or hashtag — Anytime that something weird that’s in the news, that’s such a unique way to find things. But to go on Twitter and to utilize that, it’s — I mean, it’s interesting that this guy just did it just to contact his brother.

Jack Dorsey: Well, that was the @ symbol. The hashtag was this guy, Chris Messina.

Joe Rogan: Oh, different guy.

Jack Dorsey: And he was trying to tag around topics that he was tweeting about. And, again, that spread. All we did was made it easier. We made it more accessible. We enabled everyone to do it. With the @ symbol, we made a page that collected all mentions of your name. 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. So, these things were just emergent behaviors that we didn’t predict, and they became the lifeblood of the service.

Joe Rogan: 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. There’s just this one thing.

Jack Dorsey: Absolutely.

Joe Rogan: Like how does that happen-

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: … where this one thing sort of gets adopted by everybody and takes over, and then just becomes these overwhelmingly massive platform? I mean, there’s really — Here’s Vimeo and there’s a few other videos services, but nothing on the scale of YouTube. And that’s the same thing with Twitter. There’s nothing on the scale of distributing information in a quick, short, 280-character form like that.

Jack Dorsey: I don’t think we could plan for it. I don’t think we could necessarily build for that. Someone said recently too, we just gathered a bunch of our leadership last week in Palm Springs for an offsite, and someone said recently that Twitter was discovered. And I think what’s behind all that is that it hit something foundational. It hit something essential. And my co-founder, Biz, likes to say that Twitter can never be uninvented. It’s here. It changed everything, but the use of it has been revolutionary.

Jack Dorsey: And it’s just a simple idea of 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 text and the medium, you can actually get someone’s raw thoughts, and anyone in the world can see that instantaneously. It becomes a subconscious. It becomes this like global consciousness. And it gets to some really deep places in society. And some of those places are pretty uncomfortable.

Joe Rogan: Well, it also gets to some really deep places psychologically. There’s a weirdness to it, right? There’s a weirdness to-

Jack Dorsey: Definitely.

Joe Rogan: … sending text particularly @anonymously, and there’s so many accounts that are just an egg.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: There’s so many accounts where they’re clearly designed. Like sometimes, someone will twit something mean to me, and I’m like, “Hmm, I wonder what this person’s up to?” So, I go to their site, and it’s just them tweeting mean shit at people all day long. Like 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.”

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: 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?

Jack Dorsey: There wasn’t one moment. There wasn’t one moment that it just felt completely resonant. It’s unfolded into the next thing, and the next used case, and it just keeps surprising us with how people are using it. 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.

Jack Dorsey: Twitter is unique, and that it has two main spaces. One, which is your timeline. And those are the people that you follow. And when you follow someone, they’ve earned that audience. And then, it has this other world where anyone can insert themselves into the conversation. They can actually mention you, and you’ll see that without asking for it. You can insert yourself into hashtags, into search, and these are areas that people have taken advantage of, and these are the areas that people have gamed our systems to, in some cases, artificially amplify it but, also, just to spread a lot of things that weren’t possible with a velocity that they’re not possible before.

Joe Rogan: Now, when this is all happening, what’s the conversation like at Twitter? When you’re recognizing that this is happening, that people are gaming the system, like, what do — How do you guys — How do you mitigate it? What’s the discussion?

Jack Dorsey: Well, early on, it was pretty surface level like, how do we change some of the app dynamics? But more recently, we’re trying to go a lot deeper and asking ourselves a question. When people open Twitter, what are we incentivizing? What are we telling them to do when they open up this app? We may not explicitly be doing that, but there’s something that we’re saying without being as clear about it. So, what does the like button incentivize? What does the retweet incentivize? What does the number of followers and making that number big and bold incentivize?

Jack Dorsey: So, I’m not sure what we should not — I’m not sure if we should incentivize anything, but we need to understand what that is. 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. It’s only accounts. We incentivize a lot of outrage and hot takes because of some of the dynamics in the service not allowing a lot of nuance and conversation earlier on.

Jack Dorsey: Pseudonyms, this ability to not use your real name, incentivizes some positive things like it allows for whistleblowers and journalists who might fear for their career or, even worse, their life and under certain regimes but, also, allows for people, like the example you mentioned, of just random fire and spread of abuse and harassment throughout.

Jack Dorsey: So, those are the things that we’re looking at. And how do we enable more of the conversation to evolve? How do we increase the credibility or reputation of accounts? How do we identify credible voices within a particular domain? 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, and if you want to engage in a deeper conversation or just ignore, mute, or block them?

Joe Rogan: But what is the conversation like while you’re at work? 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. It’s such a — I mean, it’s his preferred platform for communicating with the people, I mean, even more so than addresses. It’s very strange.

Joe Rogan: What’s the conversation like in the office when you’re trying to figure out, “Hey, what’s our responsibility here? Like, how are we supposed to handle this? How do we-” I mean, in some ways, what Twitter is doing is it’s really kind of — it’s flavoring the public narrative. It’s flavoring the way we communicate with each other in our culture worldwide.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah. I mean, the conversation has definitely evolved. I think, in the past, we just got super reactive. We were reacting to all the negative things that we’re seeing, and that led to a lot of short-term thinking. More recently, we’ve just looked much deeper. We don’t react to the present day. We look for some of the patterns.

Jack Dorsey: And, you know, we have a company that is not just serving the people of this particular country, the United States. This is global. We have global leaders all around the world using us in different ways. Some, with a higher velocity. Some recognize more the power. Some put out statements. Some lead conversations. But it’s looking at all those dynamics and not trying to hyper focus on any one, a particular one, because if we do, we’re only building it for one portion of the population or only one perceived present-day crisis.

Joe Rogan: But what I’m trying to get at was like, okay, when things come up, like, say, if you find out that there’s people from ISIS that are using Twitter, and they’re using Twitter and posting things, like, what is the conversation like? How do — What do we do about this? Do we leave this up? Do we recognize this is free speech? Do we only take it down if they’re calling for murder or hate speech? Like, what — How do you handle that?

Jack Dorsey: Well, it evolves, I mean, because we first saw ISIS when the world saw ISIS. And we needed to change our policy to deal with it.

Joe Rogan: What was the initial reaction to it? 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?

Jack Dorsey: It’s the question, like, what are we going to do about this?

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: We haven’t experienced this before. We need to-

Joe Rogan: Nobody has. I mean, you’re essentially pioneers.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, but there are people who have experienced it in different forms and different mediums. So, we reach out to our government partners and friends and to our law enforcement partners. We reached out to our peer companies to ask if they’re seeing the same things that we’re seeing. 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, you know, varied spectrums, whether it’d be, you know, more organizations that are more focused on preventing online harassment, all the way to the ACLU and EFF who are protecting the First Amendment online.

Jack Dorsey: 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 failed the most in the past is we just haven’t been open about our thinking process, what led to particular decisions, how our Terms of Service evolve. In Terms of Service as an area in our industry, it’s just a — it’s a mess. No one reads them.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: You know, you sign up for these services, and you quickly hit accept.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: And we expect people to read these rules of the road, but they haven’t read them, and-

Joe Rogan: Have you ever read them?

Jack Dorsey: I have read them read.

Joe Rogan: You’ve read your own.

Jack Dorsey: I’ve read-

Joe Rogan: Have you read Facebook’s?

Jack Dorsey: I haven’t read Facebook’s.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. You-

Jack Dorsey: I’m not on Facebook.

Joe Rogan: You’re not on it?

Jack Dorsey: I’m not on Facebook.

Joe Rogan: Wow. Fuck Facebook, right? No, I’m just kidding. What about Instagram, you’ve read theirs?

Jack Dorsey: I was in the first 10 users of Instagram.

Joe Rogan: Really?

Jack Dorsey: Kevin was an intern. Kevin Systrom was an intern at Odeo. And I was one of the first investors of Instagram and love the service. I don’t think I’ve ever read their Terms of Service.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, even you.

Jack Dorsey: Even me. But I read ours, and one of the things I noticed right away as, 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. You go down, and you scroll down, and you see everything about violent threats, and abuse, and harassment, and safety. And it’s not that the company intended for that to be the order. It’s just we just added things going on.

Jack Dorsey: But even a read of that puts forth our point of view. Like we’re actually putting copyright infringement above the safety-

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: … the physical safety of someone. So, we need to relook at some of these things, and how they’ve evolved, and how they reacted, and-

Joe Rogan: But is it above just because it’s listed second? I mean, they’re essentially all in the same one sheet.

Jack Dorsey: They’re on the one sheet.

Joe Rogan: When you bring it up, when you discuss it first, is that really critical? They’re all part of the Terms of Service.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, but I think that ordering matters. Like, what do we consider to be most important?

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: And we have to consider physical safety to be that one thing that we protect the most.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: And I-

Joe Rogan: So, physical threats.

Jack Dorsey: Physical threats.

Joe Rogan: Doxxing.

Jack Dorsey: Doxxing, anything that impinges on someone’s physical safety. This is an area where I don’t think technology and services like ours have focused on enough. We haven’t focused on the off-platform ramifications of what happens online.

Joe Rogan: So, what do you do, like, here’s a good for instance. 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. They want his name, they want his address, including Kathy Griffin. Like, how do you handle something like that?

Jack Dorsey: Well-

Joe Rogan: Because that’s essentially request for doxxing.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah. And that is a new vector that we haven’t seen en masse. I mean, these are the cases that bring up entirely new things. So, we have to study it. We have to see how we reacted, what happened with the network. But this goes back to the incentives. Like we are incentivizing this very quick reaction, and it’s taking away from some more of the, like, considered work that we need to do to really diagnose what’s happening in the moment. And it was — It’s such an interesting case study to see how that evolved over just 48 hours. And-

Joe Rogan: Yes. That’s one of the most fascinating news cycles or stories in the news cycle in quite a while because it’s nuanced. There’s many different levels to it.

Jack Dorsey: It’s extremely nuanced, yeah.

Joe Rogan: And a lot of like really knee-jerk reactions.

Jack Dorsey: Totally, but we helped that.

Joe Rogan: How did you help it?

Jack Dorsey: Well, it’s just that’s how some of the dynamics of the service work. And those are the things we control.

Joe Rogan: But is that how some of the dynamics of the service or is it the way people choose to use the service? Like, if you are a thoughtful person, you wouldn’t just — Like, for instance, the original image that was distributed came from an account that’s now banned, right? And so, it was discovered that that account was a troll account. How does that happen? And what was the thought process behind that? Because the image that they posted was a legitimate image. It really did happen. It was a part of an actual occurring event. So, why did you ban the person or the troll account that put it up?

Jack Dorsey: I don’t know about this particular case, but it’s likely that it was found — There’s a lot of what you see on the surface of Twitter, and some of the actions that we take on the surface, but where we spend a lot of our enforcement is actually what’s happening underneath. So, in many cases, we have trolls or people, like the case that you mentioned, whose sole purpose is just to harass, or abuse, or spread particular information. And, oftentimes, these accounts might be connected, or they start one account that gets banned, they start another account. But we can actually see this through a network lens, and we can actually see some of those behaviors. So, that might have been one of the reasons. I’m not sure in that particular case but, you know, the-

Joe Rogan: How do you know? Do you know because of IP addresses? Do you know because of the-

Jack Dorsey: A variety of things. So, it could be trying to use the same phone number or same e-mail address, IP addresses, device IDs, all these things that we can use to judge what’s happening within the context. So, we do have a lot of occurrences of suspending or temporarily suspending accounts because of activities across accounts. And that happens a ton. But what I mean in that we’re helping this right now is like some of the incentives, like just imagine seeing that unfold, and when you see someone with one take, it kind of embolden something to follow along, and then this mob kind of rolls.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: So, there has to be a way for us to incentivize a lot more considered and more nuanced introspection of what’s going on.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, give everybody mushrooms. It’s probably the only way. I don’t know. How are you going to get people to be more considerate? I mean, what-

Jack Dorsey: Providing more context.

Joe Rogan: I mean, this is essentially your engineering social behavior, right?

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, providing more context.

Joe Rogan: Providing more context. How so?

Jack Dorsey: Providing more context. Like, an example, let’s say Brexit for example.

Joe Rogan: Okay.

Jack Dorsey: So, if I followed a bunch of accounts, I like Boris Johnson who is constantly giving me information about reasons to leave, I would probably only see that perspective.

Joe Rogan: Nigel Farage.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah. And those — A lot of folks just will not follow accounts that have a completely different perspective or a different influence. A number of people do. Hopefully, journalists do. But most people won’t do that work. So, this is the only tool we give people: follow an account. If, however, during that time you followed the hashtag, you followed the hashtag #voteleave, 95% of the conversation in the tweets you see are all reasons to leave, but there is a small percentage that shows a different perspective and that shows a different reasoning. We don’t make it easy for anyone to do that. And that is a loss-

Joe Rogan: Easy for anyone to follow-

Jack Dorsey: Follow the hashtag.

Joe Rogan: … outside of perspective.

Jack Dorsey: Follow the hashtag, follow a topic, follow an interest. And because of that, we help build an echo chamber and something that doesn’t really challenge any perspective. And not to say that we should force it upon people, but we don’t even make it easy for people to do in the first place. So, the way you do that today is you go the explorer tab, you look, you search for a hashtag, or you tap into a hashtag, and you can see all the conversation.

Jack Dorsey: But that’s work. And most people just won’t do the work. They’ll stay in their timeline, and they’ll see what they need to see, 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, and they see nothing of a different perspective on the exact same situation.

Joe Rogan: What’s interesting to me is the difference between Twitter and Instagram. Essentially, it’s not just the photographs. What’s weird that has happened was there’s shitty people on Instagram as well. I mean, there’s a lot of arguments and things along those lines, but they don’t overwhelm the initial post; whereas, with Twitter-

Jack Dorsey: Totally different surface.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: Instagram is a post. I mean, it’s a post that’s not really eliciting conversation. It’s eliciting comments.

Joe Rogan: But not just that. It’s difficult to follow the conversations.

Jack Dorsey: I don’t think there is a conversation. It’s-.

Joe Rogan: Well, sometimes, there is. Sometimes, people are going back and forth about a particular subject that’s discussed in the initial post, but it’s not very clear.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Whereas with Twitter, it’s only conversational.

Jack Dorsey: It’s only conversation.

Joe Rogan: 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 lack of secondary importance.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, it’s super fluid and super messy too.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: But the thing is every — On Instagram or any blog, you have this post, the statement, and you have comments underneath; whereas, with Twitter, everything is on the same surface.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: It’s all one surface.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. My friend, Kurt Metzger, likes that about Facebook. 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. He’s like, “And their shit looks just like my shit. It’s all together, all piled up.” He goes, “But if I post something on Facebook,” he goes, “I have this whole thing. Like this is the original statement.”

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, my control.

Joe Rogan: And then, underneath it, yeah, you fucking say whatever you want, but no one’s no one’s reading.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: 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.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah. You know, there’s room for both models, but this conversation, most conversations, it’s not you making a statement, and me just reacting to that.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: Like our conversation of all of us based on what we say. We can interrupt one another. We can-

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Jack Dorsey: You know, we can completely change the subject. 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; whereas, you can’t do that in a post-comment model.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Also, text is so limited. I mean, it’s great for just getting on actual facts, but it’s-

Jack Dorsey: Also thinking. It’s just so close to thinking, right. There’s no composition.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: You know. And that, to me, is the most beautiful thing about Twitter, but also something that, you know, can be uncomfortable. Like I can compose my life on Instagram, I can compose my thoughts within a Facebook post, and they can look so perfect, but the best to Twitter is just super raw, and it’s right to the thinking process. And I just think that’s so beautiful because it gets to consciousness. It gets us something deeper. And I think that deeper-

Joe Rogan: Well, how so? How is it different than a post on Instagram or a post on Facebook?

Jack Dorsey: The speed demands. You know, the character constraint, the speed kind of just demands a more conscious, present, focused thinking versus like stepping back and-

Joe Rogan: Composing a letter.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, and composing a letter, and thinking about all the outcomes.

Joe Rogan: But, oftentimes, people do compose it as a letter, and they break it up into separate 280-character posts.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, the thread.

Joe Rogan: What was the thought process in going from 140 to 280? Because the one thing that I liked about 140 is you can’t be verbose.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: You can’t just ramble and, you know, like, it’s great for comics because it forces us to write jokes like with the economy of words.

Jack Dorsey: Exactly. We found a lot of resonance with journalist because of the headlines. We found a lot of resonance with comics because of the rhythm. 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. The thinking was we looked at, you know, languages around the world, and there’s some languages like German, 140 characters, you can’t really say much. You can’t really say much at all.

Joe Rogan: Right, because the words are so long.

Jack Dorsey: There are some languages like Japanese, 140 characters is 140 words. And what was interesting about Japan was Japan is one of our largest countries where we’re bigger than Facebook there. We’re-

Joe Rogan: Are you not bigger than Facebook in America?

Jack Dorsey: No.

Joe Rogan: What the fuck? I don’t even use Facebook. Sorry, Facebook.

Jack Dorsey: I don’t either.

Joe Rogan: I mean, I use it in terms of if I post something on Instagram, it goes to Facebook.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: But when I go to Facebook, it just seems like a lot of — Well, this does seem like Twitter too, a lot of arguing. But Twitter seems to be more fun, if that makes any sense. Even though there’s a lot of chaos, when something — One of my favorite things is when someone posts something stupid, and then underneath it is a bunch of GIFs. Do we says GIFs or GIFs? How do you say GIF? Does anybody know?

Male: Ask him.

Jack Dorsey: GIFs. GIFs.

Joe Rogan: How do you say?

Jack Dorsey: I say GIFs. I know it’s juries out.

Joe Rogan: A bunch of GIFs that are hilarious.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Like I was just mocking someone relentlessly. Like that is one of my favorite things about Twitter. When someone, like Donald Trump posts something ridiculous, and then I’ll go, and I’ll look at the responses, like, “Baaaa.” How do you care?

Jack Dorsey: It’s a public conversation. You can-.

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Jack Dorsey: You can see how everyone react, but like it’s all — The interesting thing about Twitter is there’s not one Twitter. It’s like you have politics Twitter, which can be super toxic. You have sports Twitter, you have NBA Twitter, you have MMA Twitter, you have a UFC Twitter, you have KPop Twitter, you have e-sports, whatever.

Joe Rogan: Black sports.

Jack Dorsey: You have black Twitter.

Joe Rogan: That’s Jaime’s. Jaime loves black Twitter.

Jack Dorsey: You have all these different twitters, and you have a completely different experience-

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Jack Dorsey: … based on what Twitter you follow-

Joe Rogan: Sure.

Jack Dorsey: … and what Twitter you participate in.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: Some of them are like super engaging, super funny. Some of them are you want to walk away from it.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. I got to a certain point where I couldn’t read replies anymore. I just, “Hmm.” It’s just — Not that it’s that toxic. The vast majority of interactions I have with people are super positive.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: I mean, absolutely like more than 99%. But it’s — I 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. I think when I got around 3 million-ish followers I’m like, “I can’t do this anymore.” It’s just it’s overwhelming. Like I don’t have the resources.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah. I am a huge believer in serendipity. So, 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.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, sometimes.

Jack Dorsey: And it’s just-

Joe Rogan: But then, you might miss something groovy.

Jack Dorsey: You might, but I also believe the most important things come back up.

Joe Rogan: What I used to do a lot, I would go through my mentions. And when people would essentially use that as almost a news aggregator. I’ll go through my mentions that people would post cool stories, and I would retweet those. And so, because people knew that I would retweet them, they would send me a lot of cool stuff. So, because of that, because it’s reciprocating, I got a lot of really cool stuff sent my way.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re pushing. You’re pushing more out to expand the network.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. And I reinforced it. I just I wanted to thank people for posting cool stuff, and they love the fact they would get a retweet. And so, they would send me like interesting science stories or, you know, very bizarre nature stories. And I’d just be retweeting them all the time. Go to — But then, after a while, I’m like, “This is a lot of time.” It’s a lot of time. So, now, essentially, what I do is I just post something and I’m just kind of like, “Ugh.” I just walk away.

Jack Dorsey: But that, I mean, that speaks to what we want to incentivize more. We want more people contributing things back to the network, back to the-

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: Back to the public conversation. And I know it doesn’t feel like this today for most people, but my ideal is someone walks away from Twitter learning something, and they’re actually learning something entirely new.

Joe Rogan: I think that happens a lot.

Jack Dorsey: And it might be a new perspective.

Joe Rogan: That happens a lot.

Jack Dorsey: It probably happens more often than we think.

Joe Rogan: Depending on who you follow.

Jack Dorsey: Exactly.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: It’s all dependent on the Twitter you follow. And like, you know, the health Twitter is amazing. You know, I learned some. Like I followed Rhonda Patrick and a bunch of folks who are into sauna.

Joe Rogan: She’s amazing. Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: And Wim Hof and [Ice Bess] and Ben Greenfield. 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. And I can’t find that anywhere else-

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Jack Dorsey: … in one place like that.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: And then, it’s not just them broadcasting. When they retweet something or when they tweet something, there’s a whole conversation about it. So, you know, some people say this is — you know, “This has not been my experience,” or “This is not true for me,” or “Actually, have you seen this connected thing?” And I just go down this rabbit hole, and I learn so much. But that’s not the experience for everyone. ***

Joe Rogan: No. Well, yeah, it’s not the experience for everyone, and it’s not really — I don’t think it’s what everyone wants either. Sometimes, people just like to go on there and talk shit.

Jack Dorsey: That’s true.

Joe Rogan: I mean, someone that’s trapped in a cubicle right now, and they just want to go in there, and get in arguments about gun control or, you know, whether or not Nancy Pelosi is the devil. And this is-

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: This is what — You know, it serves a purpose for them.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: The thing that gets strange though is who’s to decide. You know, there’s this concept — 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. Like anyone has access to the electric power. Even if you are — You know, even if you’re a racist, you still can get electricity. And some people think that you should have that same ability with something like Twitter or the same ability with something like Instagram. Obviously, this is — We’re in uncharted territory. And you-

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: You are in uncharted territory.

Jack Dorsey: Totally.

Joe Rogan: Just no one has been there before. So, who makes the distinctions? When you see someone that it’s saying something that you might think is offensive to some folks but not offensive to the person who’s saying it, maybe the person who’s saying it feels like they need to express themselves, and this is important to say, and how do you decide whether or not this is a valid discussion, or if this is “hate speech,” which is — You know there’s some things that are hate speech, and there’s sometimes people who use the term hate speech, and it’s just a cheap way to shut down a conversation.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah. So, the simple answer is we look at conduct. We don’t look at the speech itself, we look at conduct. We look at how the tool is being used. And you’re right in that, like, I think when people see Twitter, they see and they expect it to be a public square. 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. Some of them might find it offensive and they leave. The difference is there’s, also, this concept of this megaphone. And the megaphone can be highly targeted now with Twitter as well.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: So, it’s not the speech. It’s how it’s amplified.

Joe Rogan: So, what do you do if, like, say — Let’s say there’s someone in the media. Let’s say it’s a prominent feminist. 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. Just constantly a tagger, calling her a liar, calling her this, calling her that. When do you decide this is harassment? When do you decide this is hate speech? Like, how do you — I mean, this is-

Jack Dorsey: We look at the context.

Joe Rogan: This is a fictional account, right?

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: Fictional person we’re talking about. But in this for instance, what would dictate something that was egregious enough for you to eliminate them from your platform?

Jack Dorsey: Well, that’s a heavy action. So, that’s the last resort. But we look at the conduct. We look at — Oftentimes, as you said, the probability of someone who is harassing one person, it’s highly probable that they’re also harassing 10 more people.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: So, we can look at that behavior. We can look at how many times this person is being blocked, or muted, or reported. And based on all those, all that data, we can actually take some action. But we also have to — We have to correlate it with the other side of that because people go on, and they coordinate blocks as well, and they coordinate harassment, and they coordinate — I’m sorry not harassment but reporting. Reporting a particular account to get it shut down and to take the voice off the service.

Jack Dorsey: So, these are the considerations we have to make, but it all starts with conduct. And, oftentimes, we’ll see coordinated conduct, whether it’d be that one person opening multiple accounts or coordinating with multiple accounts that they don’t own to go after someone. And there’s a bunch of vectors that people use retweet for that, the “tweet” for that a lot as well. Like they’ll quote tweet a tweet that someone finds, and they’ll say, “Look at this idiot. Twitter, do your thing.” And then just this mob starts, and goes, and tries to effectively shut that person down.

Jack Dorsey: So, there’s a bunch of tools we can use. The permanent suspension is the last resort. One of the things that we can do is we can down-rank the replies. So, any of these behaviors and conduct that looked linked, we can actually push farther down in the reply chain. So, it’s all still there, but you might have to push a button to actually see it. You might have to show more replies to actually see this harassing account or what might look like harassing language.

Joe Rogan: And this is manually done or this-

Jack Dorsey: No, no, no. This is all automated.

Joe Rogan: It’s automated?

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: But how would you know?

Jack Dorsey: A lot of the ranking, and looking at amplification, and looking at the network is automated.

Joe Rogan: Right. Like in terms of down-ranking, is there a discussion as to whether or not this person’s reply should be down-ranked? How do you figure that out?

Jack Dorsey: It’s a machine learning and deep learning model and they just-

Joe Rogan: Whoa. So, it’s AI?

Jack Dorsey: It’s AI, and they learn.

Joe Rogan: Oh, Christ.

Jack Dorsey: And we look at how these things are doing, and where they make mistakes, and then we improve it. It’s just constantly improving, constantly learning.

Joe Rogan: Does that feel like censorship to you, like automated censorship? Because, I mean, who is to decide other than people whether or not something is valid?

Jack Dorsey: Well, we’re not looking at the speech in this particular case. We’re looking at the conduct.

Joe Rogan: The conduct.

Jack Dorsey: The conduct of someone in fast velocity attacking someone else.

Joe Rogan: Okay.

Jack Dorsey: Right. So, those are the things that our technology allows. It changes the velocity. It changes how to broadcast a message that someone didn’t really ask for and didn’t want to hear. We don’t touch — If I follow Joe Rogan, you’ll see every single tweet. We don’t touch it. Right?

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: But that’s an audience that you earn. 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. And all we’re saying is we’re going to look and move in the disruption down. Not that it’s hidden, but it’s still there, but you just see it a little bit further down.

Joe Rogan: Like, there was — What was the instance with Ari? I should text him right now, get him to answer me in real time. But Ari Shaffir got kicked off Twitter because he said something to Bert like, “Bert, I’m going to fucking kill you.” Bert Kreischer, being our good friend, all of us are good friends, and he’s like, “You fucking dummy, I want to kill you,” or something like that.

Male: He took his record albums. He said like, “I’m going to steal and break them all.” He jokingly got mad.

Joe Rogan: Right, right, right.

Male: That’s Ari though.

Joe Rogan: Bert was — I think it was all bullshit, right?

Male: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: I don’t mean Bert really stole his records.

Male: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He kept them. Yeah, he gave them back to him eventually.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Male: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: He’s like< “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Jack Dorsey: So, what happened or probably happened, and I’m not sure of that particular case, but what probably what happened there is someone might have reported that tweet. One of our agents, human agent, without context of their friendship or that relationship, saw it as a violent threat and took action on that.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: And those are the mistakes that we’re going to make. That’s why we need an appeals process.

Joe Rogan: Or Bert needs to keep his fucking greasy hands off Aris’ records, right?

Jack Dorsey: That’s probably not going to happen. We need to make sure that we’re reacting the right way.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: Like, look, we’re going to make mistakes. We’re trying to — The problem with the system right now is most of the work and the burden is actually on the victims of abuse while they’re getting harassed. So, a lot of our system doesn’t enforce or act unless these tweets are reported, right? So, we don’t take suspension actions or removal of content actions unless it’s reported.

Jack Dorsey: The algorithms rank and order the conversation, but they don’t take suspension actions. They don’t remove content. 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. But we would like to move towards a lot more automated enforcement.

Jack Dorsey: But more importantly, how do we highlight? How do we amplify more of the healthier discussion and conversation? Again, not removing it. We’re going to a world, especially with technology like blockchain that all content that exist, that is ever created will exist forever. You won’t be able to take it down. You won’t be able to censor it. It won’t be centralized at all.

Jack Dorsey: 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. But if you look at the arc of technology, it’s a given that anytime something is created, it’s going to exist forever. This is what blockchain helps enable down the line. And we need to make sure that we’re paying attention to that, and also realizing that our role is like, how do we get people the stuff that they really want to see, and they find valuable, that they’ll learn from, that will make them think, that will help them evolve the conversation as well.

Joe Rogan: Now, when you say amplify the messages that you deemed to be more positive, right, like how do you decide that?

Jack Dorsey: People decide it.

Joe Rogan: People decide.

Jack Dorsey: People decide it based on like, “Are they engaging in replies? Are they retweeting it? Are they liking it?” Are they-

Joe Rogan: But, sometimes, it’s really negative. Like, sometimes, the people that are engaging in it, engaging, they’re attacking someone. So, is that valuable, or is it just unfortunate?

Jack Dorsey: It’s valuable. I mean, every signal is something that we can learn from, and we can act on. But it’s going to constantly evolve.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: I mean, these models that we have to build will constantly have to learn what the network is doing and how people are using it. And our goal is healthy contribution back to the public conversation. That is what we want. We want to encourage people into more bigger, informative, global conversations that they will learn from.

Joe Rogan: Are you 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 companies, it’s radically changing the way people communicate with each other. 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 is unprecedented. There’s never been anything like that before. And you setting up something that you think it’s going to be a group chat.

Joe Rogan: Do you member the early days when you would say like “@Jack is going to the movies.” You would say it. Like, that’s how we would say it. I would say “@JoeRogan is on his way to dinner.”

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: That’s how people would do it.

Jack Dorsey: The status.

Joe Rogan: It’s fucking — it was weird-

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: … that somewhere along the line, that morphed, and it’s-

Jack Dorsey: It morphed because that’s what the world wanted to do with it.

Joe Rogan: That’s what they wanted to do with it.

Jack Dorsey: That’s where they wanted to take it.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: And I just think it’s so reflective of what the world is and, in some cases, what the world wants to be.

Joe Rogan: 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. It’s really nothing ever been like this before.

Jack Dorsey: No, no. And it won’t. This mode of communicating will not go away. It will just get faster. 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 make it — that cause more negative outcomes and positive outcomes.

Joe Rogan: I think about it because — Well, I think about it because it’s just a hugely, significant thing. But I also think about it because of podcasts because podcasts are in a similar way. Just no one saw it coming, and the people that are involved in it are like, “What the fuck are we doing?”

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Like me, I’m like, “What am I doing? What is this?”.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Like, for me, it’s like, “Oh boy, I get to talk to guys like Ben Greenfield, and Jonathan Haidt, and all these different people to learn some stuff.” And I’ve clearly learned way more from doing this podcast than I ever would have learned without it. No doubt about it, unquestionably. But I didn’t fucking plan this.

Joe Rogan: So, now, all the 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.” I’m like, “Oh great.” Well, I didn’t want that. I didn’t want a responsibility to what I distribute. I just want to be able to have a freak show, just talk to people, like whatever. There’s certain people that I have on whether it’s Alex Jones or anyone that’s controversial where people will get fucking mad. “Why are you giving this person a platform?” I go, “Okay. Hmm, I didn’t think about it that way and, and I don’t think that’s what I’m doing. I think I’m talking to people and you can listen.”

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: But it’s giving that person a platform because they’re saying, “Well, no, they’ll tone down.” Like Milo Yiannopoulos, that was one of the arguments people gave me. Like he toned down his platform when he was on your show, so you could get more people to pay attention to him. I’m like, “Okay, but he also talked about-” 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 underaged boys if they’re gay because there was like a mentor relationship between the older gay man and the younger, and people were like, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Joe Rogan: And that was a big part of why he’s been removed from the public conversation. That was one of the things. And then, there’s the discussion like, “Well, what is that? What is removing someone from the public conversation? 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. What is their responsibility to decide whether or not someone should or shouldn’t be able to speak?”

Joe Rogan: And this is a thing that I’ve been struggling with, and it bounced around inside my own head, and I see that you guys struggle with it, and pretty much everyone does. Youtube does. And it is a hugely significant discussion that is left to a very relatively small amount of people. And this is why this discussion of what is social media? Is it something and everybody has a right to, or is it something that should be restricted to only people that are willing to behave and carry themselves in a certain way?

Jack Dorsey: I believe it’s something that everyone has a right to.

Joe Rogan: Everyone has a right to, but you still ban people. Let’s say like, Alex Jones. you guys were the last guys to keep Alex Jones on the platform. You were the last ones.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And I believe you hung in there until he started harassing you personally, right?

Jack Dorsey: No, no, no, no. He did not-

Joe Rogan: He came to your house, he begged.

Jack Dorsey: No, no. You know, he did a very different things on our platform versus the others.

Joe Rogan: Oh, okay.

Jack Dorsey: So, we saw this domino effect over a weekend of one platform banning him, and then another, another, another in very, very quick succession.

Joe Rogan: Right. And people, I think, would have assumed that we would just have followed suit, but he didn’t violate our Terms of Service.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: And afterwards, he did. And we have — You know, we a policy. And if there’s a violation, we take enforcement actions. One might be asking the account holder to delete the tweet. Another might be a temporary suspension. Another might be a permanent suspension.

Joe Rogan: So, what you’re saying — So, like, let’s use it in terms of like him saying that Sandy Hook was fake. He did not say that on the platform. He did not say that on Twitter. He only said that on his show.

Jack Dorsey: I don’t know all the mediums he said it in.

Joe Rogan: What did he do?

Jack Dorsey: What we’re looking at is the conduct and what he did on our platform.

Joe Rogan: So, what did he do on your platform that was like — that you all were in agreement that this is enough?

Jack Dorsey: I’m not sure what the actual, like, violations were. But we have a set number of actions. And if they keep getting — If an account keeps violating Terms of Service, ultimately, it leads to permanent suspension. And when all the other platforms are taking him off, we didn’t find those. We didn’t find those violations, and they weren’t reported. But again, it goes back to a lot of our model. 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.

Joe Rogan: Right. Like a good instance is what’s going on with Patreon. I’m sure you’re aware of the Sargon of Akkad thing. 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 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, even though he didn’t do anything on their platform that was egregious. And, also, they had previously stated that they were only judging things that occurred on their platform.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: There’s been a giant blow back 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. You’re eliminating him from being able to 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, he views the world differently. This is an opportunity for you to eliminate someone who you disagree with.”

Jack Dorsey: Yeah. 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.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: That’s where it gets weaponized. And we also have to pay attention to where people are using it that put other folks in physical danger. And that is where we need to be most severe. But, otherwise, everyone has a right to these technologies. And, I think, they also have a right to make sure that they have a very simple and open read of the rules. And we’re not in a great state there. Our rules and our enforcement can be extremely confusing to people.

Joe Rogan: What has been the one thing that came up that was perhaps the most controversial? Like I know my friend, Sam Harris, was trying to get you guys to ban Donald Trump and saying if you follow your Terms of Service-

Jack Dorsey: I just did a podcast with him actually as well. It should come out today or tomorrow.

Joe Rogan: He’s a fascinating guy, Sam Harris. I love him to death. But what he was trying to do was like saying, “Hey, he’s threatening nuclear war.” Like, he’s saying, “Hey, Korea, my bombs are bigger than your bombs. Like what else does the guy have to do to get you to remove him from the platform?” When you guys saw that, what was your reaction to that? Was there an internal discussion about actually banning the President United States?

Jack Dorsey: Well, so, two things there. One, it was the context that presidents of this country have used similar language in different mediums. They used it on radio, they used it on television. It’s not just through Twitter. 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. And we have to take that context into consideration.

Jack Dorsey: So, the second thing is that we need — The most controversial aspect of our rules and our Terms of Service is probably this clause around public interest and newsworthiness, where powerful figures or public figures might be in violation of our Terms of Service, but the tweet itself is of public interest.

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Jack Dorsey: There should be a conversation around it. And that is probably the thing that people disagree with the most and where we have a lot of internal debate. But we also have some pretty hard lines. If we had a global leader, including the President of United States, make a violent threat against a private individual, we would take action. We always have to balance that with like, “Is this something that the public has interest in?” And I believe, generally, the answer is yes. 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.

Joe Rogan: And essentially, it all-

Jack Dorsey: That informs voting. That informs the-

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Jack Dorsey: … conversation. That informs whether we think they’re doing the right job, or we think that they should be voted out.

Joe Rogan: Well, it’s very important to see how someone uses that platform. And when someone uses it the way he uses it, and then becomes president, and continues to use it that way that’s when people are like, “What?”

Jack Dorsey: He’s been consistent. I think he joined in 2009, 2012.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: You look at all of his tweets all the way back then, and it’s pretty consistent till today.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. I mean, he likes to insult people on Twitter. It’s fun for him.

Jack Dorsey: Yes, he does.

Joe Rogan: It’s just I never thought he would keep doing it. 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, “Fuck you, fuck the world, fuck this,” but no. He’s just — It’s just, in one way, it’s hilarious. See, as a comedian, I think it’s awesome because it’s so hilariously stupid. It’s so preposterous that he even has the time to talk about Jeff Bezos’ affair, and the fact that he got caught with the National Inquirer getting text messages and calls him Jeff Bozo like, “Don’t you have shit to do man?”

Joe Rogan: But as a comedian, I am a gigantic fan of folly, almost against my better judgment. I like watching. I like watching disasters. I like watching chaos. When I see nonsense like that, I’m like, “Oh Jesus”. I’m drawn like a moth to a flame. But on the other part of me is like. “Man, this sets a very bizarre tone for the entire country,” because — one of things about Obama, like Obama or hate Obama because he was very measured, very articulate, obviously, very well-educated. 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. I think that’s good for us. Like yeah-

Jack Dorsey: It’s aspirational.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. It’s like, “Look at that guy. He’s talking better than me, That’s why he’s the president.” But when you see Trump, you’re like, “He doesn’t talk better than me. He doesn’t use Twitter better. He’s not — He’s just this fucking mad man.”

Jack Dorsey: But isn’t it important to understand that-

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Jack Dorsey: … and to see it-

Joe Rogan: Exactly.

Jack Dorsey: …and like to — Hopefully, that informs opinions and actions.

Joe Rogan: 100%. That’s my point. That’s my point is like that this is this weird gray area where I think, overall, I definitely support your decision to not ban him for violating your Terms of Service. Like we need to know.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: You know, and it’s — How do you know how many accounts are bots? How do you know how many accounts are from a Russian troll farm?

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Like how do you know that?

Jack Dorsey: So, this is really challenge and something that we’re trying to wrap our heads around, but like one of the things we’re trying to do is like let’s scope that problem down a bit. Let’s use the technology we have available to us, like face ID, like touch ID, like the biometric stuff to identify the humans. Let’s identify the humans first.

Joe Rogan: So, how do you use that because face ID not really available? Is it available to you guys? You just leaked something you shouldn’t have told me?

Jack Dorsey: No, no, no, no. We haven’t used it yet, but you can use it for things like, is this a human operating this?

Joe Rogan: It’s like Apple Pay, you can use it for that, so.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, it’s completely locked into the local device. We don’t have access to your images, to 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. And technology always has to change. People find ways around that and whatnot. But 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. People can script the app, can script the website, and make it look very, very human.

Jack Dorsey: So, we’re going after this problem, first, trying to identify the humans as much as we can, utilizing these technologies. None of this is live right now. These are considerations that we’re making and trying to understand, like what the impact would be and how we might evolve it. 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.

Joe Rogan: Now, is Apple willing to share that with you. I mean, when you’re talking about biometrics, fingerprints, or face ID

Jack Dorsey: No, no, no. Not the data. It’s just the operating system verifies that, you know, this-

Joe Rogan: That there’s individual user.

Jack Dorsey: It’s an individual, and it’s unlocking.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: Like, you know, when you use the — Our Cash App uses this, right. So, Square’s Cash App, 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. We don’t get images of your face. We don’t see who you are.

Joe Rogan: That’s what you want me to think. I know, yeah.

Jack Dorsey: That’s all locked down by the operating system, and that’s the way it should be.

Joe Rogan: Right. Right, sure. Has there ever been any consideration to not allowing people to post anonymously?

Jack Dorsey: Well-

Joe Rogan: Like what you said earlier about journalists and whistleblowers, that is political.

Jack Dorsey: So, look at platforms that have a real names policy. Look at Facebook.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: Are the problems any different?

Joe Rogan: I don’t know because I don’t go there, but for what I understand, there’s a lot of — still, a lot of arguing there.

Jack Dorsey: It’s the same-

Joe Rogan: A lot of political arguing. A lot of old people.

Jack Dorsey: They’re the same vectors, the same patterns.

Joe Rogan: I think, older. It’s like older, in general.

Jack Dorsey: It seems. I, also, am not really hanging out there, but it seems a little bit older.

Joe Rogan: It’s a lot of grannies looking at pictures of their kids, grandkids, and stuff.

Jack Dorsey: That’s what it’s made for. It’s connecting-

Joe Rogan: Arguing about ignorance.

Jack Dorsey: It’s connecting with the people that you know. And that, to me, is the biggest difference with Twitter. It’s connecting with the people you don’t know-

Joe Rogan: Well-

Jack Dorsey: … that you find interesting, and like it’s around topics and stuff that you find that you want to learn more about.

Joe Rogan: When you saw Zuckerberg testifying, and realizing like 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 or-

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: It really highlights how we’re entering this-

Jack Dorsey: There’s a gap.

Joe Rogan: Really, yeah. Well, not just a gap. A gap and 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.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: And they don’t really even understand what they’re talking about.

Jack Dorsey: No. I mean, there’s-

Joe Rogan: So few people do.

Jack Dorsey: Because they’re not using it directly. They’re not using in the way that people are using it every single day and-

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: … they don’t have the same experience that people have every single day. And, you know, in terms of regulatory, and our regulators, and our governments, you know, 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, and there’s a role for the company to educate on like what technology makes possible, whether it’d be positive and also some of the negatives that become possible as well.

Jack Dorsey: So, I think, we have a role to help educate and to help make sure that we’re — you know, really, we’re pushing towards what I think the job of a regulator is, which is, number one, protect the individual; number two, level the playing field, and make sure that those two things are not compromised by special interests trying to protect their own domain, or profits, or dominance within a particular market.

Joe Rogan: What do you mean by level the playing field?

Jack Dorsey: Level the playing field, so that an individual has the same opportunity that someone else might have our company might have.

Joe Rogan: So, okay. So, like anybody-

Jack Dorsey: So, anyone-

Joe Rogan: … can have a Twitter account.

Jack Dorsey: Anyone can have a Twitter account. And, you know, they have, at least, you know, an equal opportunity to contribute to it. And whatever they do with it will change the outcome. Some people might become very popular because they’re saying stuff people want to hear. Some people won’t see any following whatsoever because they’re not adding anything original, or interesting, or different in terms of perspective.

Joe Rogan: Where do you see this going? When you look at these, kind of, emerging technologies, not necessarily emerging anymore, established now, but still, you know, a new thing in relative terms of human history, where do you see this going? And does it get more intrusive? Does it get deeper into our lives? Like what — And 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?

Jack Dorsey: I mean, yeah. I mean, we just have to assume that we naturally use more and more technologies, more and more things become open, more and more things increase the velocity. There’s more communication, not less. Like this is not going away. And it’s just-

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: It’s just a question of what we do with it. So, where I want it to go, and where I want Twitter specifically to go is, you know, I think, it’s existential right now that we have global conversations about some things that will become crisis. Climate change being one of them. There’s no one nation state that’s going to solve that problem alone. Economic disparity being another, the rise of AI, and job displacement, and just like us offloading decisions to these algorithms.

Jack Dorsey: Those are things that that no one nation, no one community is going to solve alone. It takes the entire world to do so. So, I want to make sure that we’re doing our best to get people seeing these global conversations and, ideally, participating in them because it helps. It helps us solve the problems faster. I just believe that more open society allows us to solve problems much faster.

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

Jack Dorsey: Totally, totally, totally. Yeah. And I think a big part of is like, right now, like how are we ensuring that there is more healthy contribution to that global conversation. And, you know, I just think it’s so critical that we start talking about the things that are facing all of us, not just one nation. 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, to all of humanity.

Joe Rogan: What do you do though to balance the conversation, or what responsibility do you think you have to balance a conversation in terms of the way conservatives view it versus the way liberals and progressives view it.

Jack Dorsey: Balance it. I mean, show-

Joe Rogan: I mean, is there a responsibility? 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?

Jack Dorsey: I think we have a responsibility to make it easier to do that.

Joe Rogan: Easier. How so?

Jack Dorsey: Right now, it’s just too hard. Most people will not — You know, have a sticker mindset.

Joe Rogan: Venture outside of their bubble.

Jack Dorsey: They will not venture out. They will not break their bubble.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: But if you — because it’s — Right now, on the surface, it’s just so hard to do that. I can only follow accounts, and I have to look into and just imagine like, you know, trying to get an understanding of your own politics. People can’t just look at your bio. They have to look through all your tweets, they have to listen to a bunch of your podcasts and whatnot. And that’s a bunch of work. If we shift it more towards topics and interest, at least, we have the potential to see a bunch more perspectives. We see-

Joe Rogan: How do you do that though?

Jack Dorsey: The simplest thing is like follow a hashtag, follow a topic. Like why can’t you just follow Warriors Twitter or, you know, NBA Twitter? Why do you have to go and find all the coaches, and the players, and the team.

Joe Rogan: So-

Jack Dorsey: We can do that. We can help make that a whole lot easier for folks.

Joe Rogan: So, there’s something like Brexit or something. So, if you go to #Brexit, you’re going to get the whole conversation. You’re going to get the pros, the cons, the left, the right, the whole deal, the centrists. You’re going to get everybody versus following the people that you already follow that agree with what you think.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah. The probability is higher that you’ll get more. You’ll get more variety of perspective. And not even — Don’t even follow Brexit. Follow Vote Leave if you want to leave. But within that topic, there might be some dissenting opinions. And you get to choose whether those inform you, whether that emboldens your position or not. And, again, I’m not saying that we should force that upon it, but it’s not easy to even do that today, right. The only tool we give you is finding and following the accounts. And that-

Joe Rogan: But people search hashtags. They do search hashtags, right?

Jack Dorsey: They don’t based on the timeline.

Joe Rogan: They don’t?

Jack Dorsey: I mean, it is a small percentage of people. The people that really know Twitter know how to do that. But most people, they follow an account, and they stay in their timeline. And their world is their timeline.

Joe Rogan: Hashtags can be corrupted too. I mean, people-

Jack Dorsey: Totally, they can be gamed.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: They can be gamed.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, I-

Jack Dorsey: And taken over.

Joe Rogan: I took over #vegancat. Go to #vegancat.

Jack Dorsey: What is that?

Joe Rogan: It’s a rap. That’s mine now. In my last Netflix special about a woman who said a bunch of horrible things to me because I’ve put a picture up on Instagram of some deer meat. I wrote, “This is a meat from a deer that like to kick babies. It was about to join ISIS.” And I wrote #vegan, which was the mistake, right, to write #vegan. But the #vegan people went fucking crazy and came after me because I entered into their timeline with meat.

Jack Dorsey: There it is.

Joe Rogan: Have you got a #vegancat? It’s all either pictures of — See. Like it says, “Joe Rogan,” right, “Thank you. I haven’t laughed that hard in a while #vegancat.” It’s people that are feeding their fucking cat vegan food, and they’re all dying. And in the special, I say, “Every cat looks like it’s living in a house with a gas leak.” Like they’re all-

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: … like laying like, “Where the fuck is the real food?” But this is real. Like this-

Jack Dorsey: It generates conversation, different perspective.

Joe Rogan: But the thing is if someone does something like that, like you can — like pick a person, you know, whatever that person is, whatever they’re doing, if they have a hashtag that they utilize all the time for their movement or whatever, someone could mock them, and then use that. And if it’s a public figure or someone who’s got a prominent voice, then, all of a sudden, that hashtag becomes — People just take it over and start mocking them-

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: … with that hashtag.

Jack Dorsey: But it has to be done en masse.

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Jack Dorsey: I mean, it has to be coordinated. And, sometimes, people like figure out how to game the system, and coordinate it, and amplify that message in an unfair way. And that’s what our systems are trying to recognize.

Joe Rogan: How sick did that cat look?

Male: Amazing.

Joe Rogan: That poor fucking cat. That was a real one. That was a real #vegancat.

Jack Dorsey: Wow.

Joe Rogan: These poor bastards. So, when you look back at emerging social media, like we go all the way back to MySpace, right. MySpace, you got Tom. Tom was sitting there, and you’re in your top eight, and, you know, people would like post music that they liked, and it was never political. It was very — often, very surfaced. And for comics, it was a great way to promote shows, and it was an interesting way to see things. But it was like the seed that became Twitter or Facebook or any of these.

Jack Dorsey: That’s one of them. I think, we — At least, for us, like, we got more of our roots from AOL instant messenger and ICQ.

Joe Rogan: Hmm, ICQ.

Jack Dorsey: Because, it was — You know, 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.”

Joe Rogan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack Dorsey: That was the inspiration.

Joe Rogan: Oh.

Jack Dorsey: 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, you know, “I’m at Joe Rogan’s studio right now,” that is cool. I don’t need my computer. I’m not bound to this, chained to this desk. I can do it from anywhere.

Jack Dorsey: And then, the other aspect of instant messenger was, of course, chat. So, one of the things that the status would do is you might say like, you know, “I’m listening Kendrick Lamar right now,” and I might hit you up on chat and say, like, “What do you think of the new album?” But, now, it’s all public.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: So, it’s just everyone can see it. That’s the biggest difference. And that, to me, is what Twitter is, Myspace, it was profiles. And, you know, people organized around these profiles and this network that developed between people. And that is Facebook. Facebook optimized the hell out of that, and they scaled the world. We were something very different. You know, we started with a simple status. And then, people wanted to talk about it. And we decided that it should be on the same surface. It shouldn’t be subservient to the status. It should be part of that flow. And that’s what makes Twitter, you know, so fluid.

Joe Rogan: 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, that it was like a livestream-

Jack Dorsey: Search?

Joe Rogan: … message board. No. It was like-

Male: For a while, people were using TeamSpeak, but I don’t know-

Joe Rogan: No, no, it wasn’t. It wasn’t that.

Male: … if that’s on your plan that’s more recent.

Joe Rogan: It wasn’t that. It wasn’t TeamSpeak. It was — Like you would go there, and share files and stuff, and people would go — Like if Ice play a lot of online video games-

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And we play on teams, and we have teams go play other teams, and he would use this sort of — It was like a — It wasn’t a message board because it was all in real time. What the fuck was it called?

Male: OnLive?

Joe Rogan: No.

Male: No? Okay.

Joe Rogan: All right, forget it.

Male: Yeah, sorry.

Joe Rogan: Anyway, guys would go there, and you could send people files through it.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And, you know, teams would go and meet, and it would be a chat, like an online chat-

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: … that would be in real time.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, it’s — I mean, we have a lot of our roots in AOL, Instant Messenger, but also like IRC, Internet Relay Chat and Usenet, which were, you know, these old internet ’70s technology.

Joe Rogan: IRC is what I was talking about.

Jack Dorsey: IRC?

Joe Rogan: Yeah. That’s the one.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, okay, okay.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: So, Internet Relay Chat is-

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: … like this giant chatroom that anyone can join. It’s a range around topics. And-

Joe Rogan: That’s — What’s interesting about that is you could see people typing. You see it occurring in real time. You see it popping up in real time.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: You know. Just I wonder like, what is the next evolution of this? Because no one saw anything going from ICQ to Twitter. No one saw anything going from that to Instagram, and to where we’re at right now where it really does flavor the conversation of our entire culture. I mean, before, it was just a thing that was happening, that was happening on people’s computers.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Now, it’s a thing that’s happening on people’s computers. And, now, phones. And, now, your whole life. It’s a very different influence.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And I wonder because everything does accelerate.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Things constantly move forward and become more and more integrated into our life experience. And I wonder, what is the next stage of this?

Jack Dorsey: 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; that, you know, these models become completely decentralized, and all these barriers that exist today aren’t as important anymore.

Joe Rogan: When you think of something like gab, like 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 say and anything they want.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: The downside of that is, of course, the most horrible people are gonna be able to say anything they want with no repercussions. The good side is anybody can say whatever they want.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah. I haven’t studied them too much, but I do know that they have taken action on accounts as well. They have suspended accounts. And they have-

Joe Rogan: At what basis?

Jack Dorsey: … a Terms of Service as well.

Joe Rogan: What do they suspend accounts for? Do you know?

Jack Dorsey: I don’t know. It’s probably conduct-related. It’s probably — It might be doxxing, you know.

Joe Rogan: Probably, right?

Jack Dorsey: But it’s just a question of, like, you know, the rules. And if you agree to the rules, then, you know, you sign up for the service. And if not, there will be other services. But like you look at the trends, and I think, you know, certainly things become a lot more public, and certainly things become a lot more open. Certainly, the barriers and the boundaries that we have in place today become less meaningful. And I think there’s a lot of positives in that. And I also think there’s a lot of danger that we need to be mindful of.

Joe Rogan: Now, you, as a CEO, as a guy who’s running this thing, what has this been, this experience been like for you? Because I’ve got to imagine that it wasn’t anything that you predicted. No one predicted Twitter, right?

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: So, to, all the sudden, have this responsibility-

Jack Dorsey: Twitter changed everything. I mean, it-

Joe Rogan: And you’re a young guy. How old are you?

Jack Dorsey: 42.

Joe Rogan: That’s young to be in control of that much, and to have it over the time of — What has it been? 11 years?

Jack Dorsey: 13 years.

Joe Rogan: 13 years.

Jack Dorsey: We’ll be 13 in March, yeah.

Joe Rogan: Yeah. So, you were really fucking young.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Like what has that been like for you?

Jack Dorsey: It’s been both beautiful, and scary, and uncomfortable, and learning. It’s just been a ton of learning and evolving. And like it it shows me every single day where I need to push myself what I don’t know. And I think a big part is like just the realization that we’re not gonna be able to do this alone. And I don’t think we have to either. These are what the technologies that continue to allow us.

Jack Dorsey: We can — If we have to have all the answers around enforcement or policy, we’re not going to serve the world. 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. And, you know, if we’re the bottleneck for all of this, we’re not going to reach those aspirations. So, it’s just thinking deeply about how we might distribute more of this work, and decentralize more of it, and look at, you know, the platform itself, and like what we need to change to reach that reality.

Jack Dorsey: And I think we’ve got to look really deep and foundational. It goes back to, you know, your question on 140. One of the things that we saw was, you know, we shifted to 280 characters, and that — You know, this 140-characters is so sacred, you know.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: It became this cultural thing. And I was in love with it, and so many people are in love with it. 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. But where they do go above 140 is in replies. When people reply, they tend to go over 140-character limit, and even bump up into the 280 limit.

Jack Dorsey: And what it allowed — What we’ve seen it allow is just more nuance in the conversation. 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. So, we have seen that increase, the health of those conversations and the discussion. So, it’s stuff like that that we need to question and not hold so sacred.

Joe Rogan: Is there any consideration to expanding it further?

Jack Dorsey: Not right now. We were-.

Joe Rogan: How about a million characters? No?

Jack Dorsey: Well, we don’t have edit tweets right now. So, we-

Joe Rogan: Do you think that that’s good or bad?

Jack Dorsey: Well, if you can’t edit 140 characters, you’re going to be really pissed off if you write a million characters in kind of those things.

Joe Rogan: You know what I would like? 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.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Like edit but see the original.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Like say if it is-

Jack Dorsey: We’re looking at exactly that.

Joe Rogan: Oh really?

Jack Dorsey: We’re looking at exactly that. The reason we don’t have it in the first place is we were born on SMS. We’re born on text messaging. When you send a text, you can’t take it back.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: So, when you send a tweet, it goes to the world instantaneously.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: You can’t take it back. So, when we-

Joe Rogan: But does not exist anyway. I mean, no matter what, if you send someone something even, if you — on Instagram, people are gonna know the original.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, they screenshot it, and they-

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: You know, they do their thing. But like you could build it such that, you know, maybe we introduce a five-second to 30-second delay in the sending. And within that window, you can edit.

Joe Rogan: I’m gonna need more time than I do. If I fuck something up, like someone has to tell me.

Jack Dorsey: But the-

Joe Rogan: “Hey, man, you misspelled that word.” Shit, did I? God damn it.

Jack Dorsey: The issue-

Joe Rogan: But sometimes, autocorrect gets you.

Jack Dorsey: Totally. But the issue with going longer than that, it takes that real time nature and the conversational flow out of it.

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Jack Dorsey: So, then, we’re delaying these tweets. And like when you’re watching UFC or you’re watching like 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. 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. Can you believe it?” And-

Joe Rogan: But isn’t clarity more important because you’re not going to-

Jack Dorsey: It depends on the context.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: It depends on the context.

Joe Rogan: But you’re still gonna have the ability to communicate quickly.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: But you also have the ability to clarify.

Jack Dorsey: That’s where we need to really pay attention because if you’re in the context of an NBA game, you want to be fast, and you just want to be at the moment, and you just — You know, you want to be raw. 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. And we can be dynamic there.

Joe Rogan: What’s interesting to me is how few people use video. Like I thought when you guys have video on Twitter, I’m like, “Well, a bunch people are gonna be making videos and putting those up on Twitter.” And it’s not. It’s not that often.

Jack Dorsey: It depends on who you follow. It’s huge for some aspects of Twitter. It’s-

Joe Rogan: Is it?

Jack Dorsey: It’s less so in others but-

Joe Rogan: What aspects is huge for?

Jack Dorsey: A lot of sports. I mean, we see a lot of like just the replays and the recaps and like-

Joe Rogan: Right, for sure, yeah.

Jack Dorsey: You know, aspects of a particular shot that people want to comment on. I don’t like — I think it’s dangerous for us to focus too much on the medium, whether it’d be images, or GIFs, or video. It’s more about the conversation around it. Like that’s what we want optimized for.

Joe Rogan: It’s definitely very popular for sports, and in a folly, and, you know, there’s a — What is a — There’s a bunch of animal attack videos that you can-

Male: Nature is Metal.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, Nature is Metal is a good one and Hold my Beer. That’s another good one. I mean, it’s all videos. But what I meant was people making a video, talking about something.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: This is what I was trying to say. What I think is this and that, blah, blah, blah. You don’t see a lot of that. And I thought maybe that would be something that people would adopt more.

Jack Dorsey: To a different speed, you know. And I think, like the consumption of video, I mean, you see this in the technology right now. Like people are subtitling every single video because people might be in an environment where they can’t turn the audio on, or, like, a video, like I have to scrub through to see what’s interesting.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: With text, I can just see it. And it allows for a lot of serendipity to find something that I probably wouldn’t have seen unless I watched the whole damn video. So, like the ability to clip something, the ability to like index in, I think, is really critical. So, it’s not — To me, it’s not about the format. It’s about the use case and the context that you’re in.

Joe Rogan: 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, was there ever any regret, or was there ever a moment where you’re like, “What the fuck have I gotten myself into?”

Jack Dorsey: I mean, there’s — I’m always reflective of where I am and what I’m doing. I think that the biggest has been around — Twofold. One, how the dynamics of the service allow it to be weaponized in order to silence someone else or to drive them off the surface entirely, which goes against the entire concept of free speech and free participation. Like we just can’t stand for that. We need to make sure that everyone feels that they have an opportunity at a voice. And when you have these coordinated attacks, it’s just it’s not fair.

Jack Dorsey: Second is around, you know, this concept of an echo chamber and the filter bubble. I just — I don’t feel personally good about that. I don’t feel that we thought that through enough in the early days. I think we should have moved towards biasing the service towards topics and interests much, much sooner than we’re now considering doing.

Joe Rogan: Now, when you have these considerations, when you take these actions, do you consult with psychologists, or sociologists, or historians, or people to try to put in perspective for you what the ramifications of each individual move would be?

Jack Dorsey: I try to read as much as possible. I try to talk to as many people as possible. Just get a completely different perspective and-

Joe Rogan: Is there any internal disagreement about actions that you take?

Jack Dorsey: Oh yeah. There’s always debate. There’s always debate. But, I think, my role is to ask ask questions and make sure, like, what is our goal here? What are we trying to do? You know-

Joe Rogan: And that evolves?

Jack Dorsey: That evolves, that evolves. Like, is this, over the long term, going to be a net positive for all humans, all humanity? Like, how do we balance the considerations of, you know, how we serve everyone? And, like, how do we get down to something? How do we get down to a fundamental answer and a central answer? And that, to me, is where the real truth is, is when you can get to something foundational. But, you know, I like having conversations with as many people from as many different fields as possible and getting the perspective on it. So, I ask questions all the time.

Joe Rogan: 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. You’re looking at this as a way that you can benefit society, that society can benefit from your platform, can benefit from this ability to communicate. You’re not just looking at it as a tech company that has to remain profitable. And that is-

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: One of the more interesting things about tech companies, to me — I mean, there’s been a lot of criticism, maybe justified in some ways, that tech companies all lean left. 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 regardless of profit.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: I mean, because you’re not really selling anything, right. You guys have a platform. Obviously, it’s financially viable, but you’re not selling things, right?

Jack Dorsey: Well, I mean, we do our models based off people’s attention.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: And they’re paying us with their attention. And that’s extremely valuable, and something that we need to really, really honor. But I agree with you. I mean, look at Tesla. You know, I just listened to the recent earnings call. And one of the things that Elon said was, “Look, there are two reasons for Tesla. Number one is to advance, you know, different sources of energy and more renewable sources of energy because it’s a fundamental and existential crisis that’s facing all humanity. And number two is to advance autonomy because it’ll save lives and give people time back.”

Jack Dorsey: And then, you start talking about how to make that possible. And that’s where, you know, our business comes in. How do we make that possible? And we have a great business. We need to improve a bunch of it, but it serves what we think our larger purpose is, which is serving the public conversation. We want to see more global public conversations. 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, you know, how we can get people together to solve them faster and solve them better.

Joe Rogan: You also seem to be embracing this responsibility that you’re helping to evolve culture. And this is part of providing this method to communication — of communication rather. It’s helping to evolve culture. And this is something that is really only applicable to tech companies in some strange way. And it’s weird that so many of them share this.

Joe Rogan: Like I was personally a little weirded out when Google took out Don’t Be Evil. Like that was a big part of their operating model.

Jack Dorsey: Did they take that out?

Joe Rogan: Yes. Yes. Right?

Male: Mmhmm.

Joe Rogan: Make sure. I don’t want to get sued. Pretty sure they removed that from what would — What do you call that? Their operational directive? What is-

Male: It’s in the code of conduct.

Jack Dorsey: Code of conduct. And it’s not there anymore, right? They removed it.

Male: So, yeah. The other article says they removed the clause.

Joe Rogan: And this-

Jack Dorsey: It’s kind of a weird thing to tell people not to be evil.

Joe Rogan: It’s weird that they take it out. Once you already said it, it’s way weirder to say, “Yeah, fuck it. We were wrong. Just go ahead.”

Jack Dorsey: There’s another way of saying that though.

Male: They changed it to, “Do the right thing.”

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Oh. Well, what does that mean? What the fuck does do the right thing mean? Do the right thing, so you can make more money? You know, like, “Hey, we want to make money. We’ll do the right thing. It’s makes more money.”.

Jack Dorsey: I mean, that’s why — Like, that’s why this openness is so critical. I mean, that’s why-

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Jack Dorsey: Like the public — To me, the public conversation is so important. We can talk about stuff like that.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: And there will be companies forming today that look at objectives and mandates like that and base their whole culture around it. And is that the right idea?

Joe Rogan: Well, it’s-

Jack Dorsey: I don’t know. But if we’re not talking about it, we won’t be able to answer that question.

Joe Rogan: What’s also interesting because Google is so all encompassing, right. You have Gmail, you have Android. I mean, that — They are the number one operating system for mobile phones in the world on top of being a search engine. There’s so much involved in that company. And, again, like almost all tech companies, they heavily lean left, and they — 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.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And it, sort of, defined what I was talking about that tech companies are uniquely progressive.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what makes that. I think, no matter what, like, we — The internet allows for a very healthy skepticism of nearly everything.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: I’m from Missouri. It’s a Show-Me State.

Joe Rogan: Are you really from Missouri?

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, I’m from St. Louis, Missouri. We’re all skeptics. My mom was a Democrat. My dad was a Republican. My dad listened to Rush Limbaugh and Hannity all the time. I found myself somewhere in the middle. But one of the things I appreciated, we had a ton of fights, and arguments, and yelling matches around the kitchen table. But, like, I appreciate the fact that we could have them. 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, and-

Joe Rogan: They didn’t force you to be a Republican or a Democrat.

Jack Dorsey: Didn’t force me to think a particular way. Like, I think they were good, at least, showing different perspectives even in this union that they have. And I don’t know. It developed a skepticism in me that I think is healthy, and I have a lot of skepticism of companies like ours and leaders like me. I think that’s right. I think that’s right, and people should. And we — I mean, I was formed through a lot of the ideals. I think I just fell in love with what it made possible.

Jack Dorsey: And I never ever want to run afoul of those ideals. And, you know, the removal of barriers, and boundaries, and the connection that we have because of it. And, you know, I think often and reflect often about my role and the centralization of my role in our company, and I want to figure out and help figure out, like, how we can continue to add massive value and be an amazing business, which is us and will always be us.

Jack Dorsey: But at the same time, be a participatory force in this greater good that the internet has really started. And it’s not led by any one individual or any one company. And that’s the beauty of it. And I want to make sure that we find our place in that, and we can also contribute massively to it. And I think we can. 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.

Joe Rogan: Well, and it’s very encouraging that you have that attitude because, you know, a lot of people, I think, in a similar situation would try to control the narrative. 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. And I think it’s very important-

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: … to just have this open discussion. And I think it’s very important to review your own thoughts and ideas.

Jack Dorsey: Totally.

Joe Rogan: And one of the best ways to do so is through the-

Jack Dorsey: Put it out there.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, put it out there.

Jack Dorsey: Put it out there and have other people review it.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: Peer review is a great process. And the-

Joe Rogan: That was the way this podcast has evolved more than probably anything.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah. That’s the thing. 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.

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Jack Dorsey: And that’s just so amazing. Like I learn from your podcast all the time. And that’s what technology makes possible. But with that power also comes ramifications. And if we’re not talking about the ramifications and, like, at least, being open about what we know and what we don’t know. And, I think, we’re — I think we state and post a lot more of what we know rather than what we don’t know.

Joe Rogan: Why don’t you guys-

Jack Dorsey: And that’s just so interesting.

Joe Rogan: Why don’t you guys steal Don’t Be Evil? Put that in your own shit. Fuck you, Google.

Jack Dorsey: I don’t know if that’s going to help anything. Then, what is that telling our employees to do?

Joe Rogan: Don’t be evil. It’s real simple. Don’t be a dick.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah. I mean, how do we get deeper in just, like, seeing more conversation around what is “evil.”

Joe Rogan: Have you guys considered expanding your influence in other venues? Like, you know, Google started off as a search engine. Now, it’s fucking everything. Have you guys considered doing something similar?

Jack Dorsey: 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. We’re just trying to do too much too many times.

Joe Rogan: Like what?

Jack Dorsey: I don’t know. We’re trying to be everything to everyone. And like, you know, we had, you know, a video thing, and we had — We’re looking at gaming stuff and messaging. And it lost focus of what we are good at. What we’re good at is conversation, and what we’re good at is public conversation. So, we now have — As a company where, we have just such an amazing focus on what that means and how that evolves.

Jack Dorsey: And there’s just — There’s some really cool things that we can do there. Like we have this app called Periscope. And one of the things that we’re discovering is, like, a lot of people are using it to podcast. A lot of people are using it to share their thoughts, and these people come in, and, you know, they chat, and have a conversation. And one of the things we did recently is we allowed the audio to play in the background. It’s super simple, but what we found was that people didn’t necessarily want to watch the video of people talking. They just want to hear what they’re saying. And that just opened the door for more types of use cases.

Jack Dorsey: And 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. And those are the things I get really excited about. It’s like, how can we make conversation better? And, you know, how do we make it feel more live? How do we make it feel more electric? And how do we bring new technology into it that just opens a door for an entirely new way of talking?

Jack Dorsey: And that’s the thing that I think has been most educational to me about Twitter is, you know, as we talked about, we started with this idea of sharing what was happening around you. And then, people told us what they wanted to wanted it to be, and it became this conversational medium. It became this interest network. And it became a thing that was entirely new. And, you know, we observed it, and we learned more and more of what it wanted to be in. 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, 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.

Joe Rogan: Now, did you guys acquire Periscope or was-

Jack Dorsey: We acquired Periscope, yeah.

Joe Rogan: And what was the thought process when you were acquiring it?

Jack Dorsey: We like the live nature of it. We like the broadcast aspect.

Joe Rogan: Why keep it as Periscope? Why not have it be like Twitter Live?

Jack Dorsey: There’s a specific community on Periscope. And I think it’s interesting from an experimentation standpoint. We can play with ideas there. It’s a smart playground.

Joe Rogan: Scott Evans, I think, uses it better than anybody. He gets on it-

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, he’s really good at it.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: And he’s one that I think has figured out just the knack behind it. You know, he starts every one of them with this simultaneous sip of coffee.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: So, he gets his listeners and his viewers engaged right away. And then, he just goes on. And then, every now and then, he’ll, you know, look at the comments, and riff off them. So-

Joe Rogan: He lets people build up too. Like, he’ll announce that he’s going on, and then wait a little while, say hello to some people.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Then, once a bunch of people are in the room, then he starts talking.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah. And I just — I find that so interesting because that is the future of conversation. It’s looking at the patterns. It’s looking at what people are trying to do with the thing. And then, you build technology around it. And that becomes the next big thing. And we just have to — We have to hone our power of observation, hone our power of, like, connecting the dots, and looking at all the patterns, and what people are — It’s what’s the question behind the question? What’s the statement behind the statement that they’re making? And if we can get good at understanding some of those fundamental central things, then we’ve reached — We’ve, at least, created the probability that most people in the world will find it useful and find it valuable.

Joe Rogan: Joey Diaz as the other person that uses Periscope better than anybody live, but he just gets on.

Jack Dorsey: I haven’t seen his.

Joe Rogan: He just gets baked. It gives you a morning — What does he call it? Morning Band Head?

Male: The Morning Joint.

Joe Rogan: The Morning Joint, yeah. He’ll smoke a joint or smoke a bowl in the morning, and then just sort of let everybody know-

Jack Dorsey: Doing something-.

Joe Rogan: … what’s mine is mine.

Jack Dorsey: Doing something in sync with one — with more people is interesting. Like we’ve had some folks who are interested in doing meditations through Periscope.

Joe Rogan: Oh, that’s a great idea.

Jack Dorsey: You can — I mean, if you look at the surface level, you can’t imagine anything more boring than like watching someone meditate. But if you’re actually meditating with them, there’s something powerful about it. And, like, what can we do to improve that experience?

Joe Rogan: What about people using it for group workouts? Is anyone doing that?

Jack Dorsey: I’m sure it’s happened, and I haven’t seen it personally, but I’m sure it’s happening.

Joe Rogan: How much more people do you have on Twitter than Periscope?

Jack Dorsey: A lot.

Joe Rogan: A lot more, huh?

Jack Dorsey: A lot. It’s one of those things that I, personally, just have a lot of conviction around, and I have a lot of belief in the format, and I — You know, every now and then, we don’t have instant hits. It just requires a lot of patience. And we need to really learn what it wants to be. And, sometimes, that takes time. And, you know, I think, oftentimes, I’ve certainly done this, you know, we shut down things a little bit too early.

Jack Dorsey: We did this at Square. Like we had this amazing technology, an app I love called Square Wallet. 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. And as you walked up, your name would pop up on the register, so you could say like, “I want a cappuccino. Put it on Jack.” And it just automatically charge your card. And it would only happen if you were within, like, two feet. We’re using Bluetooth, and geolocation, and whatnot.

Jack Dorsey: But, you know, 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. Like for four years, it was just a slug. Like a lot of people in the company wanted to shut down the thing. They saw it as something that wasn’t successful. And, you know, recently the team reached number one in the App Store in the United States.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: Like, we are all — We are against all these incumbents like Venmo, and PayPal, and it finally clicked. And it’s just because we have the patience and the conviction around our belief.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, it’s a great app too. And the ethics behind it are really fantastic too. We’re really thankful for the Cash App, especially my friend, Justin Rand, and his fight for the forgotten charity that every time you use the code word, joerogan, all one word, it all goes-

Jack Dorsey: We match it.

Joe Rogan: $5 goes to that. And they’ve built two wells for the pygmies in the Congo.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And they’ve raised thousands of dollars in building more wells right now. It’s really, really cool.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: We’re really, really happy about that.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, yeah. I love it. I think it’s-

Joe Rogan: It’s a great way to save money too. I mean, when you can save 10% at Whole Foods-

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: I mean, that’s real.

Jack Dorsey: Well, the other thing is like the population that we serve, typically, are underserved by banks or unbanked entirely.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: Today, we are their bank account.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: But more importantly, they don’t have access to things like rewards. You don’t get rewards on a typical debit card or credit card.

Joe Rogan: Right.

Jack Dorsey: So, like, just, you know, 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, and they won’t even enable them to get in the door in the first place.

Joe Rogan: Well, if people were listening to this on YouTube, you don’t know what the fuck we’re talking about, the Cash App has a thing called the Cash Card, which is a debit card that you get with it, and there’s a thing called Boost. 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. And they’re real discounts.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And in this-.

Jack Dorsey: Instant, instant.

Joe Rogan: For folks with bad credit, there’s no credit check. You can direct deposit your paycheck right into the app. And the fact that you guys do things like support Fight for the Forgotten, and you’re supporting UFC Fighter Ray Bourque’s son who’s got some serious medical bills-

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: … it’s really, really cool.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, yeah. I’m really proud of that. I’m really proud of the team. It’s a very small team, but they’re doing some big things.

Joe Rogan: I hear a lot of good things about it too. I’ve run into people on the street that tell me they use it, and they’re very happy about it.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: So, it’s nice to see, again, an emerging technology that’s profitable, but, yet, also, has a really good set of ethics.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan: Do you have Don’t be Evil in Cash App’s code of honor?

Jack Dorsey: No, no, no.

Joe Rogan: Maybe you should not take it. It’s free now.

Jack Dorsey: One of our equivalent operating principles within Cash and Square is like under — like, how do we understand someone’s struggle? Like, how do we understand? Like, how do we have empathy for like what they’re struggling with? And, like, when it comes to finance, they’re struggling with a lot.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: Typically, they’re struggling with the ton.

Joe Rogan: 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.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: Are you guys going to consider other forms or cryptocurrency as well?

Jack Dorsey: Not right now. So, back to the internet, I believe the internet will have a native currency.

Joe Rogan: Really?

Jack Dorsey: It will have a native currency. And I don’t know if it’s Bitcoin. And I think it will because just given all the tests it’s been through, and the principles behind it, how it is created. And, you know, it was something that was born on the internet, that was developed on the internet, that it was tested on the internet. It is of the internet.

Jack Dorsey: And the reason, you know, 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. We’re the first publicly-traded company to actually offer it as a service. We’re the first publicly-traded company to talk to the FCC about bitcoin, and what that means. And it made us uncomfortable. We had to, you know, like really understand what was going on. And that was critical and important.

Jack Dorsey: And then, the second thing is that, you know, we would love to see something become a global currency. It enables more access. It allows us to serve more people. It allows us to move much faster around the world. 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. And we wanted to just to make that easy. Like, just the simplest way to buy and sell bitcoin. But we also knew that it had to come with a lot of education. It had to come with constraint because, you know, two years ago, people did some really unhealthy things about, you know, purchasing bitcoin. They maxed out their credit cards and put all their life savings into the bitcoin.

Jack Dorsey: So, we developed some very simple restrictions and constraints, like you can’t buy Bitcoin on the Cash App with a credit card. You have to — It has to be the money you actually have in it. And we look for day trading, which we discouraged and shut down. Like that’s not what we are trying to build. That’s not what we are trying to optimize for. 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. So, we really tried to take on the role of education and have some like very simple healthy constraints that allowed people to consider what their actions are in the space.

Joe Rogan: Now, when you have something like the Cash App, which it’s very much a disruptive technology in terms of, like, decentralization of banks and currency. And, you know, to have it where everything is going right — You’re direct depositing a paycheck right in the app if you so choose. Then, you could also buy Bitcoin, which is another disruptive technology. I mean, that — This is another step towards this sort of new way of doing things now.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And is there pushback from any companies or is there-

Jack Dorsey: Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, like, you just look at, like, some of the major banks and their consideration around Bitcoin. They all love blockchain because of the efficiencies it can create for their business and potentially new business lines. But, you know, I think, there is a-.

Joe Rogan: Explain blockchain for people who don’t know what we’re talking about.

Jack Dorsey: Blockchain is a distributed ledger. 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. And you can see, you know, this annotation around how content or how around money, like, traveled.

Joe Rogan: So, you don’t have to go to an institution to get them?

Jack Dorsey: So, the records, yeah, there’s no centralized check. There’s no a centralized control over it. And I think that is threatening. It’s certainly threatening to certain services behind banks and financial institutions. It’s threatening to some governments as well. So, I just look at this and, like, how do we embrace this technology, not react to it, you know, more from a threat standpoint, but, like, what does it enable us to do, and where does our value shift?

Jack Dorsey: And that’s what we should be talking about right now is like how our value shifts. And there’s always really strong answers to that question. 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. And it’s the people that like are, you know, growing up with this technology, or born with the technology, only knowing that technology, or are asking the tough questions of themselves that are going to be super disruptive to their business, and they’re thinking about right now, and they’re taking actions.

Jack Dorsey: And, you know, we’re doing that at Square, and we’re doing that at Twitter. And like that, to me, represents longevity. That represents our ability to thrive. And we got to push ourselves, we got to make ourselves uncomfortable, and we’ve got to disrupt what we held sacred, and what we think is success because, otherwise, it’s not going to be bigger than what we have today.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I think that cryptocurrency, to me, represents one of the more interesting discussions on the internet lately.

Jack Dorsey: Totally.

Joe Rogan: What is money?

Jack Dorsey: Yeah.

Joe Rogan: And why are we agreeing that it’s these pieces of paper that the Federal Reserve prints out?

Jack Dorsey: Totally. It’s a fascinating time in technology because, like, that, to me, was one of the last, big, centralized nationalized instruments is currency, is money. And when you think about the internet as a country, as a market, as a nation, it’s going to have its own currency. But what’s interesting about the internet as a nation, it’s the whole world. It is the whole world. So, the world gets one currency. It gets one thing they communicate in. And that, to me, is just so freeing and so exciting.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, I’m very excited by it. And I’m also very excited at the fact that it’s only been around for such a short period of time but-

Jack Dorsey: 10 years.

Joe Rogan: And it’s become a part of the global conversation.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, it’s like a good brand.

Joe Rogan: I also think that it’s going to open up the door to potential universal languages. And I think this is-

Jack Dorsey: Totally.

Joe Rogan: This is-

Jack Dorsey: Totally.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: Yeah, that excites me a lot about Twitter is like, how do we — Like it — If we want to get the world into a conversation, not a single conversation but, at least, being able to see that global conversation, like we’ve got to work on technologies that would like instantly translate.

Joe Rogan: Yes.

Jack Dorsey: We 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. That is amazing. That is so exciting.

Joe Rogan: Yeah.

Jack Dorsey: And like just how that evolves, and how it impacts, not just communication like this but music. And just like, you know, how hip hop, and rap, and, you know, just — It just — It’s amazing to think about where that can go and where that can take us.

Joe Rogan: 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-

Jack Dorsey: Totally

Joe Rogan: … in human history.

Jack Dorsey: Totally.

Joe Rogan: I don’t think there’s ever been a time where things have changed so radically, so quickly.

Jack Dorsey: Totally. Yeah. And I feel, you know, we’re just — We’re able through technologies like Twitter to, at least, see and acknowledge some of the issues that we’re still facing that we’re probably in the dark before. 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.

Jack Dorsey: And, you know, as uncomfortable as, you know, 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. And, you know, there’s some huge ones, 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, and like it will threaten our ability to be in a planet, to live on this planet.

Joe Rogan: I agree. Thank you.

Jack Dorsey: Thanks again.

Joe Rogan: Thanks for everything, man. Thanks for being here.

Jack Dorsey: Thank you.

Joe Rogan: Thanks for doing what you’re doing. Thanks for having the attitude that you have. I really, really appreciate.

Jack Dorsey: Thank you. Joe.

Joe Rogan: My pleasure. Bye everybody.

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