Tangle - Jack Dorsey just resigned. Now what?

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

On Monday, Jack Dorsey announced he was stepping down as CEO of Twitter, the social media website he co-founded in 2006. He is going to be replaced by Parag Agrawal, the company's chief technology officer who started at Twitter as an engineer and has been working on technologies associated with cryptocurrencies.Why it matters: Twitter is one of the most important meeting places for political minds and discourse, and has played a huge role in the political world over the last five years. Former President Donald Trump mastered engagement on the platform, using it to drive media coverage of his presidency, sidestep traditional news outlets and speak directly to his followers. And then, in the wake of the January 6 riots at the Capitol, he was banned.You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum. Some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul. And on today's episode, we are going to be talking about Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, who just stepped down. A blockbuster news out of Twitter. Jack Dorsey announcing he is stepping down as CEO.

He'll be replaced by Twitter's chief technology officer. Twitter shares dropping two and three quarters percent today. This after a big pop initially on the news. We're following breaking news this hour. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has announced he's stepping down. The markets are already responding to the news. So let's go ahead. We have breaking news in the tech world.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has resigned from the social media giant. Dorsey confirmed the news with a tweet saying it is time for Twitter to move on from its founders. He will remain on the board until at least May. The chief technology officer of Twitter will take over as CEO. As always, before we jump in, we're going to start with some quick hits. First up, a 15-year-old Michigan high school student is in custody after opening fire inside his school yesterday, killing three students. Authorities say they are still exploring a motive. Number two, Supreme Court justices will begin hearing oral arguments in the biggest abortion case in decades this morning. Number three, former President Barack Obama joined

Dr. Anthony Fauci at a D.C. children's vaccine clinic yesterday to encourage more kids to get vaccinated. Number four, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said he is cooperating with the House investigation into the January 6 riots at the Capitol. Number five, Andre Dickens, an Atlanta City Council member who made public safety a top issue, easily won a runoff election to become Atlanta's next mayor. easily won a runoff election to become Atlanta's next mayor. All right, that's it for our quick hits. And before we get into today's main topic, I want to issue a quick correction and also a clarification from yesterday's podcast. In yesterday's podcast, while talking about the history of abortion, I said that in many European and Asian countries, abortion is available upon request, and the most common time limit is 12 weeks after the first day of the last menstrual period, or about 14 weeks after conception.

I started the newsletter out by saying how ill-informed many people are on this issue backwards. 12 weeks after the last menstrual period is 10 weeks after conception, not 14. You subtract two, don't add it. Otherwise, as one reader noted, women would have a period after conception. This was, to my fascination, actually one of the most corrected errors in Tangle history. I think more than 50 people pointed it out via email. I'm impressed and humbled. Thanks to you all for the eagle eyes. Also, a quick clarification, not really a correction, but there's kind of a confusing sentence that a few people asked about

where right after I wrote that abortions became illegal in the early 1900s, I said, at the same time, though, abortions were becoming increasingly available and legal. This should have said they were becoming increasingly available and common. I just got done saying that they were becoming illegal and then said they were becoming legal. So it was kind of confusing. Anyway, the first one is the 47th Tango Correction in our 121-week history and the first correction since November 23rd. We've unfortunately had a few this month, which is a bummer. I track corrections and place them at the top of the podcasts and newsletters

in an effort to maximize my transparency with you, our listeners. All right, that is it for the corrections, and that brings us to today's topic, Jack Dorsey. On Monday, Jack Dorsey announced he was stepping down as CEO of Twitter, the social media website he co-founded in 2006. He is going to be replaced by Parag Agarwal, the company's chief technology officer, who started at Twitter as an engineer and has been working on technologies associated with cryptocurrencies. So why does this matter? Well, Twitter is one of the most important meeting places for political minds and discourse and has played a huge role in the politics world over the last five years.

Former President Donald Trump mastered engagement on the platform, using it to drive media coverage of his presidency, sidestep traditional news outlets, and speak directly to his followers. And then, in the wake of the January 6th riots at the Capitol, he was banned. For many journalists, Twitter is the first place they share their work, and as a result, it is one of the first places that news breaks. Politicians, reporters, entrepreneurs, athletes, and others have faced some of their most intense criticism on the platform. As Axios put it, the person who controls Twitter controls the de facto public square, with implications for politics, media, and free speech. So what does all this mean? Well, Dorsey's resignation could signal a major shift at the company.

Republican lawmakers have long complained that Twitter stifles conservative voices, while Democrats have feared it is being leveraged to spread misinformation. Agrawal is facing down a legislative body that is hungry to regulate, albeit for different reasons. Twitter is also in the midst of changing its platform, hoping to transition from an ad-based social network that puts a premium on text tweets to a subscription-based platform centered around smaller communities and multimedia. Naturally, the CEO's resignation and what it means generated a lot of commentary. Below, we'll take a look at some thoughts from the left and the right, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying. The right worries we might end up wanting Jack Dorsey back despite his flaws. They have highlighted concerns about Twitter moderates its platform and hope to see that change. Some

question Parag Agarwal's past comments about speech, worried he will make the platform worse than it already is. In the Washington Examiner, Tim Carney said we might miss Jack Dorsey at Twitter. Twitter has not always been fair, honest, or tolerant of politically unpopular ideas or people, Carney wrote. It banned President Donald Trump but allows multiple propaganda accounts from the slave state of North Korea and the terrorist state of Iran. The social media platform often freezes out users for non-offenses and occasionally tries to use its rules to advance culture war extremism. Twitter's worst decision was blocking links to stories just before the election that shed light on the tawdry connections between Biden family foreign business dealings and Biden's positions. For these and many other reasons,

outgoing CEO Jack Dorsey deserves blame. But the irony is that Dorsey was, among all those in the tech world, more attuned than most to the dangers posed by his company and his industry. Big businesses often form alliances with big government to the benefit of both and often to the detriment of the public good. The post-Dorsey leadership under new CEO Parag Agarwal may avoid this temptation. It may resist the siren call of hysterical millennial and Gen Z staffers calling for more censorship of conservative opinions. But both of these forces will likely prove overwhelming. Both of these forces will likely prove overwhelming. Post Dorsey, I expect Twitter to become more censorious, to lobby for more regulations, and to become an active participant in the left's culture war offenses.

In the New York Post, Will Furrer said Agrawal is walking into a hornet's nest. Dorsey was blasted during his tenure after Twitter blocked the account of the New York Post for its exclusive reports in October 2020 on the contents of a hard drive that held emails and other materials from a laptop that was abandoned at a Delaware repair shop by Biden's son, Hunter. The company also drew fire from some who said it was part of the big tech censorship brigade that shut down President Donald Trump out of social media when it banned his account after the January 6th Stop the Steal riots. Already, Agrawal has been involved in the company's efforts to fight so-called misinformation,

which he struggled to define in a November 2020 interview with MIT Technology Review. Agrawal claimed the company wouldn't, quote, try to adjudicate truth, but instead would focus on, quote, potential for harm. Adjudicating content is one area where Dorsey stumbled badly, and he admitted as much, but only after the damage was done. In The Federalist, Emily Jashinsky said Parag Agrawal might make a poisonous platform worse. Jack Dorsey is leaving his platform in the hands of Parag Agrawal, the company's chief technology officer, a man who said last year, Twitter's role is not to be bound by the First

Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation and to focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed. Agarwal's false binary between healthy discourse and the First Amendment is alarming but unsurprising. It indicates Twitter is set to devolve further into a company that seeks to decentralize the discourse to one that bolsters its corporate gatekeepers. Setting the First Amendment both as a legal and cultural norm at odds with a healthy public conversation is obviously in vogue with culturally leftist elites. It's also based on postmodern nonsense. A healthy public conversation must include all perspectives so the correct and moral ones can emerge and prevail in the court of public opinion, rather than being adjudicated by elites and protected with force from criticism. Twitter is a private company, but Agrawal was clearly arguing against

the norm of the First Amendment as the philosophy for our discourse. All right, so that's it for the right's take here, and this is what the left is saying. The left has mixed feelings about the move, but gives Dorsey credit for turning Twitter into what it is. Many say Twitter's ability to elevate outside voices is also what has made it dangerous at times. They hope Agrawal's product experience will help Twitter improve in the near future. In Vox, Sharon Gaffery says Dorsey deserves credit for shaping the company into what it is today. While it's too early to say if and how Twitter will operate any differently under Agrawal's watch, what we do know is the company is losing its vision-oriented, original-thinking founding leader. He may have

been an absent CEO at times, but was nevertheless respected by many in the tech industry for inventing a platform that put the public in conversation with each other about topics both trivial and world-changing, while retaining a sense of humor and eccentric personal style. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported

across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. Dorsey was, in some ways, an unconventional leader,

and under his guidance, Twitter did things a little differently. While Twitter suffers the same problems around hate speech, extremism, and harassment that every social media platform faces, it has managed to garner praise from members of the social media research community for offering more transparency, at least compared to competitors, about what goes viral on its platform. And the company clearly wields incredible influence as the social media platform of choice for world leaders, journalists, and many celebrities and newsworthy figures. In his newsletter, Matt Taibbi said Twitter suffered from working too well. Specifically, Society responded to Donald Trump's tweet-driven 2016 presidential campaign as if it revealed a

defect in the platform that needed fixing, when actually Trump's election was proof that Twitter was working much as intended. Our political establishment just wasn't looking for that sort of functionality. Trump didn't need the news media to amplify his message. He was expressing himself in a way that defied contextualization on a Twitter account that essentially became the country's most followed media network. Whether he was being dumb or smart, petty or cutting, incoherent or inscrutable, Trump had a way of expressing himself that automatically gave his tweets superior reach to news stories about his tweets. This put him permanently ahead of the news cycle, Taibbi wrote.

With this power, a politician was now able to communicate directly with voters, and even the collective displeasure of the entire self-described political establishment could not stuff that genie back in the bottle. People will focus on the fact that it was bad Donald Trump got elected that year, but that was really incidental. The real problem Trump represented for elite America had less to do with his political beliefs than the unapproved manner of his rise. Twitter, seen as a co-conspirator in this evil, became a target of establishment reprisal after Trump's win. In the Washington Post, Will Aramis and Elizabeth Dwoskin said Twitter's new CEO is bringing an engineering background to a politics fight. As chief technology officer, he also had limited experience handling

the thorny questions of content policy, what people are allowed to post on social media, that makes Twitter an influential force in global discourse and a target of criticism and regulation by governments and political actors around the world. Instead, insiders say, his formidable engineering chops, his alignment with Dorsey's vision of a decentralized future for social media, and his relatively uncontroversial reputation within the company helped to make him the choice over other, perhaps more obvious internal candidates in a closely guarded and opaque succession process. Agarwal will bring a keen intellect, those who know him say, but little to no experience in the political realm. Then again, few other big tech CEOs had political experience when they stepped into the top job either. And the pressure Twitter's board faced from investors was less about the nuances of its policy decisions

and more about developing popular new products that would spur user growth and give it more mainstream appeal. All right, so that's it for the left's take and the right's take, which brings us to my take. So I'm quite torn here. On the one hand, Twitter is probably my favorite platform of all the options on social media. It's helped me grow my newsletter. It's a great assist to process breaking news. And if you curate your feed properly, it's an incredible place to learn and interact directly with experts. There is no doubt that Twitter has been a boon for my career, too, with some viral tweets of mine bringing in new followers who I could then turn into newsletter subscribers and loyal readers. But Twitter is also kind of a hellscape. Parag Agarwal got a taste of exactly how the platform

works on his first day when some users dug up an 11-year-old tweet where he was quoting a comedian saying, if they are not going to make a distinction between Muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists? Agraw immediately got dogpiled for the tweet, with accusations he believed all whites were racist and calls for him to resign. Of course, the practice of elevating decades-old tweets free of context and making them appear as evil as possible in order to damage someone's career is one of the most popular things to do on Twitter, especially by the left, though this time it was conservatives attacking him. And so a lot of people viewed this as Agarwal getting a taste of his own medicine, of the platform he built. It's also true that Dorsey, for all his flaws, was transparent and owned his mistakes. It's also true that Dorsey, for all his flaws, was transparent and owned his mistakes.

When Twitter blocked the sharing of the Hunter Biden laptop story on the absurd charge it was a story concocted in Russia, Dorsey later apologized and conceded they had folded under pressure and acted irrationally. It looks even worse now after Politico's Ben Schreckinger published a book on the Biden family that confirmed some of the emails were authentic and gave a clear-eyed view of how Biden's family has profited off his presidency. This kind of self-awareness and ownership from a CEO of a major tech company is actually pretty hard to find. As for Agarwal, I'd like to give him some time. His quotes about free speech are certainly concerning, but he isn't a unilateral actor here. His goal is to build something that out-competes other platforms and that users want to spend time on, and the controversies and battles on Twitter are still part of its allure. On Tuesday, Twitter announced a major new policy change to remove private photos and videos if they are posted without a person's consent, though there are exceptions for public events

or people of interest. This seems like a totally reasonable policy to me, even though it got trashed by the left and right immediately after it was announced. For now, I think Agrawal deserves a chance and Dorsey some praise. The former is on his third day of a new job, and the latter created one of the most influential platforms in the world, even if its importance is sometimes overstated, and the Americans who use it are not actually very representative of the country as a whole. who use it are not actually very representative of the country as a whole. All right, that's it for my take, and that brings us to your questions answered.

Today's question comes from Shelby in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Shelby asked, in response to the increase in worrying gerrymandering of voter districts, what would happen if half of the Democratic voters in the gerrymandered district re-registered as Republicans prior to the midterms? Or vice versa, where districts are gerrymandered in Democrats' favor? By voting in the appropriate primaries, at least it might be possible to prevent candidates from the far right or left from winning, which might return some sanity to our government. It seems simple, is it? So look, so we are probably going to do a Big Friday edition on gerrymandering soon. It's something a lot of Tangle readers have been asking for. But the short answer is no, this wouldn't really solve anything and it's not simple. Certainly, if you got a huge majority of voters to switch party affiliation,

they could make an impact on a primary race. But I really can't think of any realistic way to do that, given both how much political parties are tied to someone's identity and the fact that primary voters are usually the most motivated and politically partisan. Never mind the inconvenience of just switching your voter registration. On top of that, though, the advantage of gerrymandering is really about general elections, not primary races. It's about taking a state that leans one way on the whole and turning it into a state run by the other party once you divide up who votes where. The polling savant Dave Wasserman pointed this out on Twitter just last night, noting that a recent Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling on how the state's map will

be divided means Republicans are likely to have a 6-2 seat advantage in the House, despite the fact Biden won the state. That is what gerrymandering is all about. Whenever we do our in-depth edition on this, we'll talk about some potential solutions out there, but none of them are foolproof. Suffice it to say, my opinion is we should pick our leaders and not the other way around. So I generally view gerrymandering as an abhorrent practice. as an abhorrent practice. All right, that brings us to our story that matters. This one is from the Senate, which is inching closer to axing paid family leave and medical leave from Democrats' $1.7 trillion climate and social spending bill. Paid family leave, one of the most popular proposals on the table, has already been inserted and removed from the bill once. This time,

Senator Joe Manchin, the Democrat from West Virginia, is once again acting as a holdout, saying he'd prefer to craft a separate bipartisan bill on the issue with Republicans, which is something other Democrats say is a long shot. Republican support for paid family leave is fractious, though, and the odds of the GOP agreeing on a paid family leave proposal among themselves are slim enough, let alone coming to an agreement with Democrats. If paid family leave doesn't get into this bill, it's unlikely we'll see any legislation pass the Senate any time in the near future. Politico has the story today. All right, that brings us to our numbers section. These are all about Twitter,

most from the Pew Research Center. 10% is the percentage of Twitter users who create 80% of the content on the platform. 40 is the median age of all adult US Twitter users. 47 is the median age of all US adults. 46% is the percentage of Twitter users who say the site has increased their understanding of current events. 53% is the percentage of Twitter users who say the site's misleading or inaccurate information is a major problem. And 30% of users say Twitter is mostly good for democracy, while 38% say Twitter is mostly bad for democracy, with the rest saying it has no impact. And that brings us to our Have a nice day story. This one is out of Massachusetts. A man

recovering from an open heart surgery was mailed a scratch off lottery ticket while he was still in the hospital. Alexander McLeish received three scratch off tickets and a get well card from a friend. And one of those tickets, you guessed it, ended up being a second top prize of $1 million. It wasn't even the first time this has happened to him. A few years ago, McLeish said he won $1,000 on a lottery ticket his friend gave him for his birthday. The lucky draw and the incredible story was covered by CNN. All right, everybody, that's it for today's podcast. As always, you can support us by clicking the link in our podcast description.

And don't forget, this week, Giving Tuesday. So we are giving half of all new subscription revenue and tips away to a charity that is feeding the hungry here in New York City. So if you subscribe today and you're not yet a subscriber, half of your new subscription revenue will go straight to the good cause. Thank you guys so much, and we'll see you tomorrow. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle's social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet75.

For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. The faster money and data move, the further your business can go to a seamless digital future for Canadians. Let's go faster forward together. In life, interact. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history,

and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older,

and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.