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Comment by meibo | Hacker News Reader

Anything Jack is involved in is tainted for me until further notice. I wouldn't even dare to touch any of his new platforms, seeing his connections with Elon and how his judgement failed so spectacularly with the Twitter deal - it's not worth it, just to be sold out again when he gets bored of it or it doesn't end up being a business. At least he admitted to it.

I'm not saying Mastodon is the solution, but at least no one can take it away from me at a whim or has full control over the protocol and the app.

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> how his judgement failed so spectacularly with the Twitter deal

A CEO doesn’t approve an acquisition in a publicly traded company. The Board of Directors decide.

> or has full control over the protocol and the app.

Jack does not have any control over the nostr protocol.

He may arguably have some control over one of the iOS client apps (due to him finding the dev), but that’s about it.

I was an organizer of nostrica (nostr’s first conference) last month. Yes, Jack paid for the venue, food & merch but he didn’t ask for anything in return.

He was very humble about the whole thing. More than I thought he would be.

> A CEO doesn’t approve an acquisition in a publicly traded company. The Board of Directors decide.

Don't put words in my mouth. It may not entirely have been his decision, but nobody forced him to go on Twitter to say that he "chose him" and that he "believes it with all his heart"[0]. You cannot possibly tell me that you think that he was uninvolved in setting up the deal. Him being friends with Elon for ages is public track record.

> Jack does not have any control over the nostr protocol.

Jack is bankrolling the founder of the protocol with more than $240k. If you think that a SV CEO is doing that because he wants to create a better world, good on you. If you have any evidence that that doesn't give him any control, I'd be happy to see it. I feel like it's valid to be a little sceptical.

[0] https://theprint.in/tech/jack-dorsey-says-elon-musk-is-singu...

The recipient of that donation (@fiatjaf) immediately split it 50/50 with the developer of Damus (@jb55). All distributions have been done in public. At last check, fiatjaf has already dispersed 70% of the donation to other people/groups.

fiatjaf has been a prominent developer in the Bitcoin community for many years. Think what you may about crypto bros, fiatjaf is not that. I've had the pleasure of working with him a bit & have been on the receiving end of debates with him. I've always found him to be an upstanding person with deeply rooted ethics, even if I regularly disagree with him. If $240k were enough to sway him to do something he thought was wrong, Bitcoin would've been destroyed already.

I understand where you're coming from, though. If I didn't know the players and hadn't followed along (on nostr) intently throughout, I would likely have the same concerns as you. I still do, to some extent. Though my personal experiences and interactions with these people has helped assuage most of it.

> If $240k were enough to sway him to do something he thought was wrong, Bitcoin would've been destroyed already.

How could fiatjaf destroy Bitcoin if he wanted to? He is not even a contributor in Bitcoin Core.

> Don't put words in my mouth.

> You cannot possibly tell me that you think that[...]

> If you think that a[...]

You put more words in people's mouths than anyone else.

> If you have any evidence that that doesn't give him any control, I'd be happy to see it

Here you go: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr/nips

Not joking it’s a protocol and clients decide what standards they want to implement.

Jack is great. He has a big heart. He should fund retro secure scuttlebot (rss). We're putting together a team right now.

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