The idealized future of Twitter: a protocol, not a platform?

Interview: Hongjun, Text: Zhu Jie

Source: Silicon Valley 101

Do you remember this saying?

"We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters."

We once thought that the plans of "Iron Man" to soar into the sky and land on Mars were the truly exciting revolutions, representing the most thrilling directions for the future. And Twitter was its antonym.

At that time, no one would have thought that the first thing Musk would do upon returning to the internet was to privatize Twitter. When presenting his acquisition proposal to Twitter's board, he stated that Twitter is "the platform for global free speech," but its current form cannot fulfill this "social responsibility," thus "it needs to transform into a private company."

On the night Musk completed the acquisition deal, Twitter's co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey also posted a very interesting tweet, saying: "Twitter should not be owned or operated by anyone. Twitter should become a protocol-level public good, not a company. To solve this problem, Musk is the only solution I trust."

Will Musk follow the path set by Jack Dorsey, or will he become the next king of a centralized social network?

What kind of mission has Jack Dorsey given himself, and what kind of new land is his fully committed Bluesky?

Can Twitter, this chirping little bird and its residents living in this digital kingdom, transcend existing boundaries through protocols and establish a new world?

This podcast was recorded on April 15, the day after Musk had just proposed the privatization invitation. We invited Suji Yan, the founder of Mask Network, to share his views on these issues from the perspective of an insider. Looking back half a month later, not only is it not outdated, but it also seems to confirm more viewpoints.

1: Insider's View on Jack Dorsey: Unconventional, Eager to Break Free from Twitter

Silicon Valley 101: Recently, there hasn't been much interesting happening in the old internet world, but the development speed of the Web 3 world is very fast. Facebook and Twitter have both made some transformation plans related to Web 3. Now with Musk emerging, proposing a series of ideas for transforming Twitter, it should be quite interesting to chat with Suji about this topic today.

Suji Yan: I consider myself one of the early players in the industry working on decentralized projects related to Web 3 social, and I was among the first batch to join Bluesky. I can't say I was a founding member since they don't have such a concept. They just set up a website and created a Discord group, gathering a bunch of quirky people involved in open source and blockchain, including Jack Dorsey and Jay Graber, who later became the CEO of Bluesky.

After interacting for a while, I can understand why if I were a traditional investor, I would also think Jack Dorsey is not a good CEO; I would definitely be annoyed with him and would want to fire him. But if I were a Gen Z person, a user still holding ideals about the internet, I would actually appreciate Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter.

On the other hand, Musk has been away from the so-called internet for a while, focusing on cars and rockets, and then suddenly he comes back. Not only does he return, but he also wants to participate. He had some public exchanges with Jack Dorsey early on. So when we saw Musk wanting to privatize Twitter, it wasn't that surprising; I was more surprised by the speed of developments. In today's conversation, I have many personal experiences and observations to share.

Silicon Valley 101: You just mentioned that in the Bluesky community, you can roughly understand why Jack Dorsey is not a good CEO. Why is that?

Suji Yan: People think a good tech company CEO, like Tim Cook, should be impressive, earn a high salary, wake up at five in the morning to run, and rush to the front lines, like factories in China, embodying the spirit of a professional manager. But Jack Dorsey is not like that; if he's not interested, he just disappears.

For example, everyone knows Jack Dorsey created an NFT from his first tweet. Behind this is a project called Cent, which we invested in. They wanted to turn every tweet into an NFT and asked if I could find Jack. I said it might be quite difficult; from a normal company's perspective, he is a high-level executive CEO, and what you want to do conflicts with his company's business. Why would he support you?

But I still helped introduce him. Jack is not hard to find, but he doesn't reply to your messages, or he disappears; after making an appointment, he might not show up a couple of days later, saying he went to do yoga. Later he reappeared, and normally, if you want to meet someone like Ma Huateng or Zhang Xiaolong to discuss something, there would definitely be some processes, going through some people. But when Jack Dorsey showed up this time, he was very direct, saying okay without going through any processes; he might have decided in a second to sell his tweet.

Silicon Valley 101: Jack Dorsey has too much unpredictability. Around 2020, the hedge fund Elliott Management wanted to kick him out of the board, and in the end, Silver Lake Capital negotiated with Elliott for $1 billion to keep Jack Dorsey in his position at Twitter. Judging from a fair perspective, Jack Dorsey's performance at Twitter during his tenure was not good.

Suji Yan: The incident where Elliott wanted to get rid of him is related to Bluesky as well. Jack Dorsey's faults are not just about meditation and cryptocurrency trading; as the CEO of two public companies, he hardly talks about either of them on Twitter. To others, he might seem like a full-time Web 3 investor or missionary. He later changed his Twitter bio, deleting everything, leaving only one word: "Bitcoin."

He would say in Bluesky, "Don't mention Twitter to me," which would definitely drive shareholders crazy. He also promised to push Twitter to provide funding for Bluesky. Later, you could see that Bluesky was moving very slowly, with many fewer activities, mainly because the funding hadn't come through. Jack's control and influence were weakened due to Elliott's involvement, and he didn't bring in much funding from Twitter to Bluesky.

2: The Protocolization of Social Media: Grassroots Bluesky vs. Glamorous Facebook Libra

Silicon Valley 101: Briefly introduce Bluesky. If I understand correctly, it aims to create a decentralized social network protocol. Twitter is a company, while Bluesky might be an independent organization.

Suji Yan: Bluesky was established at the end of 2019. Because Twitter's logo is a blue bird, Jack felt that the little bird should fly to the blue sky.

He has done many things that are very symbolic. For example, he created a Twitter account for Bluesky, and the first tweet he posted was the letters "lo," which is a very geeky reference because the first message in the history of the internet in 1969 was "lo." The operator wanted to type "log in," but after typing the second letter, the connection was lost.

Jack Dorsey didn't turn it into a commercial company but made it a PBLLC, similar to an industry association or NGO. At the beginning, Bluesky felt like a group of misfits, not in a bad way, just very strange. For example, Bluesky doesn't have a CEO position; at that time, there were only managers or community leaders, one of whom was a girl named Jay Graber, who is also my friend. Her career background is not traditional; she came from Zcash, which is also an anonymous coin.

At the same time, Facebook was working on Libra, which came out with a high profile, with members being professional managers from Visa and Uber. I met Jay for the second time at a conference at Stanford. I was quite happy going there, planning to learn something, but when I entered, it felt off; there were huge posters of the Libra logo on the walls.

Silicon Valley 101: Facebook sponsored it.

Suji Yan: Yes, the styles of operation are completely different. Facebook looks for the most capable professional managers, goes to the best schools, sponsors events at Stanford, and books entire buildings for meetings. In contrast, at that time, Bluesky felt like a guerrilla group, a bunch of people in flip-flops and T-shirts playing games in a Discord group, chatting about very strange things every day, which was quite funny, and they wouldn't do any sponsorship because they had no budget. This comparison is very interesting.

Silicon Valley 101: The outcomes of these two projects are also quite interesting. Facebook recently dissolved the Libra project. Bluesky has been around but hasn't made much progress, which has also been criticized by the industry. As mentioned earlier, it may have encountered some obstacles from Twitter's board. I'm curious why Jack Dorsey proposed the idea of Bluesky; he already has Twitter. What is his own vision?

Suji Yan: The original intention of Twitter was decentralization. The four founders initially wanted to create a podcast incubator, and podcasts are based on RSS, which is the first generation of non-centralized distribution technology. So Twitter has a deep connection with the decentralized technology of that era. Many major innovations, like hashtags and pull-to-refresh, were not initiated by this company but were first proposed by the community. Third-party clients were also a great entrepreneurial direction.

Until Jack Dorsey was ousted for the first time, several management changes occurred, and many restrictions were implemented. We saw all third-party clients shut down, and many completely closed-source, non-open initiatives were made.

At this point, we can only say that the founder still held onto the idea of decentralization, but this company has already lost that connection. You can no longer see any interaction between Twitter and the community or draw any ideas from it. All you see is it copying Clubhouse to create Twitter Spaces, which is public history. As a young entrepreneur, Jack had to satisfy shareholders and was forced to do these things. Twitter's market value is around $30-40 billion, but its annual profit last year was only $300 million, which is quite miserable.

Silicon Valley 101: I specifically made a comparison. Today, Facebook's market value is $570 billion, while Twitter's market value is $34.4 billion, a 16-fold difference. Both are social media; why has Twitter's market value remained so low?

Suji Yan: The organization of a company requires centralization. Its origin is that the governance financial reports need to look good, which is contrary to the so-called democratic, open, and free internet. Whether it's plagiarism or outright theft, it is very direct. The model for companies is Facebook; back in the day, when they acquired Instagram, if the two founders didn't listen to me, they were out.

Silicon Valley 101: I've heard another version of this story. At that time, Jack Dorsey also wanted to acquire Instagram and reportedly offered a higher price than Zuckerberg. Moreover, Jack already knew the founders of Instagram. When Instagram was developing early on, Jack was continuously posting on Instagram to support it. When Jack heard that Instagram accepted Facebook's offer, he was so angry that he shut down his account.

Suji Yan: Instagram's choice of Facebook might not have been about the money. If I were a young CEO and saw the Twitter people doing yoga every day while the Facebook people were so impressive, with many secret technologies and advanced algorithms that could allow more people to use my product, I might also sell at a relatively low price.

But on the other hand, I was born in 1996, younger than many entrepreneurs. I see that they rarely think about issues from a societal perspective: when you have a very efficient machine and a ruthless algorithm, it can bring about efficient growth, but at a certain turning point, as a distributor of social networks, it acts both as a referee and a player, leading to the destruction of traditional values. This is a two-sided issue.

3: The Values Influencing Jack Dorsey: Want Protocols, Not Platforms

Suji Yan: From a company's perspective, Twitter may be a failure, but from the perspective of protocols, Facebook is also not impressive; it, Twitter, Toutiao, Tencent, and Alibaba are all failures. The Bitcoin Foundation and the Ethereum Foundation have only a few people, and their history is very short. People might think Bitcoin is more of an asset property, but Ethereum has a large number of developers, and its decentralization is at least as good as Twitter's. Ethereum was launched in 2015 and now has a market value of $300 billion; it truly understands that it wants to create a protocol, not a platform.

I think Jack Dorsey and his old shareholders are caught in the painful transition of that era. What he wants in his heart is a protocol that can be remembered for generations, breaking the boundaries between commercial and non-commercial, transcending national boundaries. However, he was forced to create a company and build a platform in that era, and the evaluation criteria for a platform versus a company are profit models.

Silicon Valley 101: Has Musk realized this? Does Musk want protocols or platforms?

Suji Yan: Musk has been away from the internet for a while; his last internet company was PayPal. The two people he interacts with the most are actually Jack Dorsey and Cathie Wood. The three of them even formed a group called "B world." After their meetings, you would see him buying cryptocurrencies and interacting in the community, which is quite amusing. I believe he definitely resonates strongly with Jack Dorsey's ideals.

Silicon Valley 101: There was a saying that Musk's acquisition was to help Jack Dorsey return to Twitter. What do you think?

Suji Yan: First of all, barring any surprises, Jack Dorsey will likely resign from the Twitter board. I believe Musk's timing in buying Twitter is definitely related to Jack's resignation, supporting him at this moment. As for whether they communicated, I don't know.

Silicon Valley 101: Where did the news of the resignation come from?

Suji Yan: Jack said it himself. Last year, when he announced his resignation, he posted an open letter on Twitter, saying he would stay on the board during his term and then leave everything. His term is until May of this year.

Silicon Valley 101: After stepping down as CEO and resigning from all board positions, can Bluesky still move forward?

Suji Yan: He has now joined the board of Bluesky. Bluesky is now a PBLLC, a type of organization that is similar but not entirely a non-profit, not fully pursuing profit. Jay Graber has officially been promoted to CEO and has the first batch of employees. Many quirky people from the open-source community have jumped over to work there, and the funding has come through. How did the funding come through? I suspect it was provided by Jack Dorsey.

Silicon Valley 101: So now Bluesky and Twitter should have no relationship?

Suji Yan: The last time we talked, Bluesky still hoped to get investment from Twitter, but if Twitter is holding back on funding, they will fund themselves. They have already started recruiting many researchers and programmers and will continue to adhere to the original idea of creating protocols, not platforms.

Silicon Valley 101: What kind of protocol does he want to create? Can social networks interconnect?

Suji Yan: For those of us who initially believed in this idea, today's internet is like a medieval society, and we are all digital laborers. My assets on Facebook cannot be taken away, just like in the Middle Ages when I moved from one city-state to another, I could only leave with nothing; my data must stay there. Every feudal city-state has a king, for example, Zuckerberg is the king of Facebook. If it were to open up, similar to a free market or early capitalism, my posts could be NFTs or stablecoins, which I could take with me.

I recommend everyone read the article "Protocols, Not Platforms." It is not a technical or business article but a blend of technology and political philosophy. Its dissemination channels are not traditional tech media; it was first circulated by two foundations in a small circle.

In today's already centralized internet, this is something many people dream of achieving. Everyone feels that protocols should be created, as they at least provide the possibility of freedom, while creating platforms falls back into an old discourse system of walled gardens. What does it mean to grow large?

4: Aaron Swartz, Founder of Reddit: The Intellectual Impact of an Internet Martyr

Silicon Valley 101: You previously recommended a documentary "The Internet's Own Boy," which I found quite shocking. It tells the story of how Aaron Swartz, the founder of Reddit, was gradually driven to death by the government. Describing him as "the founder of Reddit" feels narrow; he was truly a genius who made significant contributions to copyright and information openness, and can genuinely be said to have changed the world. His death also changed some very absurd laws regarding the internet. How do you think the death of someone like Aaron Swartz influences the values of people like Jack Dorsey?

Suji Yan: His death brought a shock. Aaron Swartz made many contributions to the RSS protocol and was one of its core inventors; podcasts are inseparable from RSS.

Silicon Valley 101: Our podcasts are now distributed using RSS.

Suji Yan: Podcasts are a rare example. At that time, there were several supporters of RSS, including Google, which launched the earliest and largest reader, Google Reader, for text and social distribution. But gradually, people jumped ship because they couldn't stand the impact of social networks; centralization is just more efficient and can generate more money. As a company, having more assets means you can't compete. So when Google decided to create Google Plus to imitate Facebook, the big brother had already betrayed.

RSS surviving in the audio field was an accident. People might think that audio production is just a bunch of artistic youth with no money to make, so no one ventured into that area. Later, it was Apple's Podcast that supported RSS. Another company, SoundCloud, which has a good relationship with Jack Dorsey, hosts many independent musicians and media people, also based on the RSS protocol, so RSS survived. Today, the inventor of RSS has committed suicide, and subsequent maintenance may not be as diligent, but it still exists. We see that protocols are very robust and strong, and their values transcend nations.

I believe that before Aaron Swartz's suicide, everyone knew that RSS could survive for many years, whether in the niche field of text or in audio. However, no one expected Aaron would leave the world in such a way, firmly telling the world: I am right, and you are wrong. His death shocked many who came from that field; after 2014, many people's mindsets changed. The documentary "The Internet's Own Boy" was sponsored by an angel investor of Twitter and premiered at South by Southwest. Many products, including Twitter, were launched at South by Southwest music festivals, but the later South by Southwest festivals have already become corrupt and commercialized.

So the screening of this film is very symbolic. The angel investors behind Twitter would think back to when they worked with Jack Dorsey on podcasts, which suddenly became profitable, but the young kid who worked on RSS has already died, becoming the first martyr of the internet, while we have lived for so many years doing what? So when new things emerge, we must shout, "I want to try," and forget that I am a CEO or an investor, etc., things unrelated to the internet. Therefore, whether it's changing his social profile to "Bitcoin," selling an NFT with ease, or funding a bunch of open-source protocol layers, all of these are extensions of this story.

Silicon Valley 101: When I watched this documentary, I saw some past footage of Aaron, and I really felt that his eyes were exceptionally pure.

Suji Yan: Aaron left behind many thought-provoking philosophical tech ideas. Jack Dorsey has also said on Twitter that he feels regret, saying he is part of the evil results of the internet.

Silicon Valley 101: Yes, I remember there was a lot of controversy when he banned Trump's account. He said that decision was correct but also very dangerous, and although the review of a commercial company is different from that of the government, the feeling is actually very similar.

5: Choices: Entering a New World or Transforming the Old World

Silicon Valley 101: Our conversation today is on April 15, and I see that Twitter's board is also brewing a poison pill plan to oppose the acquisition. So how likely is it that Musk can privatize Twitter? I look forward to seeing how things develop next.

Suji Yan: If Twitter continues down this path, it will only lead the world toward a dystopia. Regardless of how it develops after privatization, it will be better than now, giving more hope than the current situation. Of course, we may face another problem. If Musk becomes the world's largest philosophical king, what will happen to his future rule? I hope there will be a more decentralized solution to avoid this issue.

Silicon Valley 101: Why do you think that if Twitter continues to develop like this, it will move further away from the idealized social platform? We still have Bluesky, Mirror, and Mask Network.

Suji Yan: I say this realistically: various projects on Ethereum, including peer-to-peer social networks like Mastodon, have not formed a migration effect. Most people find it very difficult to transition from Web 2.0 to the new world.

Many early Twitter users are citizens of this digital society. Why should they migrate? Why should they leave instead of transforming their own digital nation? Suppose we are in digital France before a great revolution, and there are two options: one is to go to the new land, to Mirror to blog, to do things on IPFS or Arweave; this is one option, just take care of the new land, and let the people of the old land be. The other option is to provide you with open-source methods and cryptographic methods to try and make mistakes together; this is the way to awaken most people.

Silicon Valley 101: What kind of world will the future internet be?

Suji Yan: Recently, many people are promoting two books, "The Sovereign Individual" and "Cypherpunks," which already have official Chinese translations available for everyone to read. Today, we are on the edge of a new type of digital dystopia, and this slide has already begun for many years. With new technologies, it is even more important to enlighten these digital citizens. There may be one or two people like Musk who help you privatize Twitter, but ultimately the choice is in the hands of the users.

The future internet can be more protocol-oriented. We see that protocolization means it transcends existing human technological structures and establishes a new world beyond commercial companies.

Silicon Valley 101: This is the world the internet wanted to create when it was born; it just didn't expect to end up in a platform and monopoly world. I remember that Li Yang wrote in "The Orange Book" that Twitter was established in 2006, and the Bitcoin paper was published in 2008. If Jack Dorsey had created Twitter after the Bitcoin paper appeared, he might have taken a completely different path. He must have thought about this open-source architecture, but as a commercial company, many practical issues were in front of him, making it impossible.

Suji Yan: A few days ago, Jack Dorsey tweeted, "Many things from the ancient era of the internet are beautiful. Centralized discovery mechanisms and user identity mechanisms, controlled by companies, have indeed harmed such an internet. I am one of those who should be partially blamed, and I feel regret for this." I think all successful internet entrepreneurs today should reflect on this statement. Whether you are from Alibaba, Tencent, Toutiao, or Facebook, you should not bury your head in the sand anymore. Someone has already become a martyr for this issue, and more people will join in the future.