For the last 6 years Dorsey was CEO, with final say on all corporate priorities. He could have undone this "worst thing" from an earlier time when he "wasn't running the company" in fairly short order. He didn't.
Did he only come to the realization it was the "worst thing" after leaving the positono where he could've fixed it?
Dorsey's passing the buck here, both ways: blaming his predecessor for the error, then saddling his successor with the undone hairball task of fixing it.
And dark patterns, dark patterns and intentionally crappy UX everywhere. With every redesign the web version of twitter becomes ever harder to use. Right now, when you try to read replies to a tweet, a fairly common thing to do:
- Only a few replies are visible initially
- There's the "more tweets" section below them with algorithmic recommendations
- When you click "load more" on the replies list, it only loads like 4 replies and you have to click it repeatedly to see the entire list, if you have enough patience
And that's only one interaction. There's also the dreaded "{{ user }} follows"/"{{ user }} liked"/"{{ user }} replied"/"{{ user }} received a reply" garbage in the feed. Just hear me out: I want my feed to consist of the tweets from the people I follow, in the order in which they were tweeted. That's it. Nothing more. That's all. If someone I follow would like for someone else's tweet to appear in my feed, there's already a dedicated button that does exactly this.
And I would like to point out that this latest horrendous redesign was rolled out when Jack was still the CEO, and he didn't do a thing to stop it.
This is why I think the 6 years of Jack's tenure as CEO was mostly a wasted time for Twitter and I think it shows that it's extremely hard to run 2 large companies at the same time.
I am a regular user of Twitter and I can't really tell you what the've added over the last 6 years. Some safety-related features, a new layout, 280-character limit, Twitter Spaces - is that it?
I know that opening Twitter might have meant a temporary hit for the stock price, but it's not like the stock was doing well in the first place:
Square went from $12 in 2015 to $83 before COVID to $170 today with a peak around $250.
Twitter went through ups and downs and today it stands at $45, around the same price as in 2013.
I realize it's all way more complicated, but I hope the new CEO turns it into a better product.
The corporate mindset is geared to maximize profit. When you remove yourself from the system for long enough you definitely have a different perspective on things. Maybe they were afraid that it would grow out of control and the system couldn't handle it if programs were automating tweets. I'd say that is a valid concern. So they have to have systems in place to avoid malicious players. Maybe it just wasn't prioritized. Or maybe Jack's philosophy has changed. I don't think it's unreasonable for someone to admit they see things differently now. It's human nature and if anything we should welcome their honesty.
I agree with all that, but thats not really what the argument is. As crappy as the Instagram web client might be, at least Instagram has a proper API, that accepts both authenticated and anonymous requests.
Why didn't he un-do it? Cost? It would open the platform up and take people away from Twitter (the platform itself, where the ads get displayed) which is bad for the stock?
I'd agree those are among the real, internal corporate motivations for why Twitter has only teased openness in ways no one can rely on.
And yet, Dorsey's tweet labels the "killing API access", before his 2015-2021 CEO tenure, as the "worst thing we did". Unqualified superlative: "Worst!"
And further Dorsey claims company he no longer runs "will continue to open back up completely". Unqualified superlative: "Completely!"
So he must have some really vivid idea of how the company could undo its "worst" mistake" and pursue a novel, trustworthy openness "completely" - that nonetheless somehow escaped tangible commitments during his reign. Did he figure out how to square the circle of Twitter's business model just in the 24 days since resigning as CEO?
Did he only come to the realization it was the "worst thing" after leaving the positono where he could've fixed it?
Dorsey's passing the buck here, both ways: blaming his predecessor for the error, then saddling his successor with the undone hairball task of fixing it.