An Interview with Jack Dorsey

The interview mentions the word "protocol" 26 times, but sadly no detail on what a successful social media protocol might look like, or how it could get adopted given where we are today.

What I believe we've witnessed, with the recent launch of many Twitter clones and subsequent lack of sustained traction, is that large social networks are _really hard_ to replicate, and therefore extremely valuable. So you're not going to see any of today's social media companies opening up their networks through open protocols. If anything, the opposite continues to happen, as networks shut down APIs (except for ads) and disable third party clients.

To me, the only solution is (sadly) a government mandate, and one that restores citizens' ownership of their social media profiles and networks through a requirement to publish open APIs for the data. Unfortunately, this seems very unlikely to ever happen. Technology companies today are so rich and powerful, they have lobbying teams which will ensure such regulation never passes (at least in the US, where it could have some impact).

I read that Unix was the third try at an operating system after Multics and "the unnamed game system" for Ken Thompson, and that prior experience led to the charmed third attempt. I hope that Jack Dorsey is at the same stage of his career after his experience with Twitter and Bluesky, and is now pregnant with a practical decentralized social media protocol. Go Jack!