Jack Dorsey, the founder and former CEO of Twitter (now X), admitted that Twitter’s relationship with the government was (and potentially still is) “problematic.”
Mike Solana, editor-in-chief of Pirate Wires, sat down for an interview with Dorsey, and the pair discussed some of the problems that arise from governments worldwide attempting to censor speech on social media.
Since the release of The Twitter Files, there has been much scrutiny surrounding the relationship between Big Tech and the Federal Government. Dorsey called the collusion between these entities “problematic.” However, he also claimed, unbeknownst to the public, that there was some pushback from Twitter employees to the government’s censorship instructions.
“I also don't think the people who got called out in The Twitter Files get enough credit for pushing back on government requests,” Dorsey said. “The U.S. is certainly one of them.”
The U.S. government was by no means the only government hounding Twitter (now X) to censor.
According to Dorsey, X has traditionally complied with government censorship requests to some extent. However, he alleged that Musk is more willing to ban accounts at the request of foreign governments.
There are certain loopholes, however.
“You can take the content down within the country, but it's still available to the rest of the world,” said Dorsey. “But if someone in that country has a VPN, they can still see it. And I think governments are wise to this now, so today they're asking to take content down in every single market.”
Dorsey cited the recently relevant example of Australia. “But what you saw with Australia recently, is the prime minister asked Twitter and Elon to take some content down everywhere, instead of just within the Australian market,” Dorsey said. “I think you'll see more and more of that stuff.”
When asked if there’s a chance social media companies will survive this effort, Dorsey said, “There’s absolutely no way.” He added, “You’ll have phases, but that doesn’t exist forever. Elon will fight in the way he fights, and I appreciate that, but he could certainly be compromised. Or something could happen to him, and then what happens to the whole platform?”
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