Are you fucking kidding me?
Jack Dorsey is a main track speaker at FOSDEM this year:
https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4507-infusing-open-source-culture-into-company-dna-a-conversation-with-jack-dorsey-and-manik-surtani-block-s-head-of-open-source/
I am at a loss of words. I also owe sincere apologies to everyone flagging issues with FOSDEM over the years, whose concerns I often somewhat minimized. I am sorry, you were all right and I was wrong.
FOSDEM is now explicitly platforming AI/blockchain bro fascists.
@rysiek I'm new to techy culture and am still mostly a newb at coding and doing cyber security and all that. Can you explain what this means and why it's bad? Like I know why and agree AI shills are bad, but otherwise I'm a bit lost.
@SUp3rN0va the second link I think explains it pretty well. But to add to that, Jack Dorsey is responsible for killing the early idea of Twitter being federated.
Let me say this again, Dorsey is the person who killed the early push inside Twitter (we are talking very early, when it really could have made the difference) to make Twitter a decentralized service. As in, like fedi is today.
And now he's going to bloviate about open source at FOSDEM?..
@rysiek @SUp3rN0va do you have references for that?
In the last years I only heard him speaking about thr importance of protocols and decentralized platforms. With criticism of Twitter etc.
Afaik he is also funding work on that (like for example initially bluesky and nostr)
To me he was one of the most active and outspoken CEOs in that regard.
@bumi @SUp3rN0va regarding the federated Twitter work, I interviewed a person who had worked there at the time, and it was a real thing, published here in Polish:
https://oko.press/ucieczka-z-twittera-przyszlosc-mediow-spolecznosciowych
As far as Dorsey killing it, that's coming from people I know and trust who are in a position to know about this. There are probably other sources online, too.
As far as Jack's "decentralization" shtick, I mentioned this in my blog post about BlueSky's faux-decentralization:
https://rys.io/en/167.html#jacks-bs
@bumi @SUp3rN0va Dorsey quit BlueSky after it started adding basic moderation tools:
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/why-jack-dorsey-quit-bluesky-142010934.html
You know, tools to stop nazis from harassing Trans folks, for example. That sort of thing was unacceptable to our boy Jack.
He is a definition of a billionaire techbro, who thinks "likes" on social media "exist only to inform an algorithm." He sold Twitter to Musk, saying:
> Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.
@bumi @SUp3rN0va he's a "free speech" libertarian type "decentralization" supporter:
https://techwontsave.us/episode/228_jack_dorseys_embrace_of_crypto_libertarianism_w_david_gerard
He had been running Twitter for years. He could have just implemented an API and made it decentralized. He didn't.
Which is to say the difference between him and Musk is that Musk has his own platform now, and Dorsey needs to pay lip service to "decentralization" when he gets annoyed with the idea of marginalized communities having a voice on social media.
@rysiek @SUp3rN0va
thanks for the links will read up on it!
+ implementing an API is not decentralizing.
+ I assume there has been much pressure from shareholders and governments. In a publicly traded company he is a rather small person with limited power
+ I like to remember a time where “moderation” was called “censorship” and where the point of a decentralized protocol was censorship resistance and a desired property, esp. for any community.
@rysiek @SUp3rN0va in that yahoo article he says a decentralized solution must be independent of a company on the protocol level. Thus also censorship can not happen on the protocol level.
sounds true to me on all protocols. Sounds even rather anti-big-tech to me.
I don’t see what this has to do with Nazis or Trans folks.
@rysiek @SUp3rN0va that comment on the “likes” is also totally out of context, isn’t it?
To me it rather criticizes social media algorithms and feeding those. To me those are problems of social media tools which just amplify bubbles.
What a good solution to appreciate an author of a post looks like might be up for debate, but I follow the criticism of centralized social media algorithms and don’t see a problem of him saying that.
@rysiek @bumi @SUp3rN0va Dorsey gave money to Musk to buy twitter
don't remember if it was only by allowing share conversion or if he also gave cash, but Dorsey is still invested in twitter