The movie about Mark Zuckerberg co-founding Facebook hit theaters in 2010. A parody version of the Social Network trailer was a hit on the internet. The parody imagined how dumb the picture would be if it was about a company that was not very well known. Surely a movie about a founder of a social networking site who is not famous enough to be named would not be much more than a celebrity talking about their breakfast.
It was clear by the time Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO of the social media company in November of 2021, that he was the owner of the most dramatic narrative in social media history. After being ousted by Williams in a board coup in 2008, he reinvented himself as the spiritual heir to Steve Jobs. He made a name for himself in the media and was able to get back to the top job over the course of six years.
That is enough raw material for a blockbuster, but what happened next would make for a more interesting sequel. The era of the troll had begun, and Dorsey was completely unprepared to deal with it. He didn't realize that the harassment of Gamergate was driving some of his most loyal users off the platform when the biggest troll used the service to help him get elected president. The source of threats to the planet in general and American democracy in particular has suddenly become the center of the world.
A movie character is most compelling when he grows and learns. That is what has happened in recent years, and what has not happened. Zuck has total control over his company and a disturbing level of faith in his algorithm. Result: Facebook is a four-alarm trash fire, now facing a well-armed whistle blower and bipartisan consensus that it needs to be regulated. The changes made by Dorsey have not fixed everything, but he has left his successor with a manageable, almost cute dumpster fire. Many of the users of this hell site were joked about when it was learned that Dorsey had ascended from there. "delete Facebook" is still a far more popular term than "delete Twitter", according to data from the internet giant. That's a win for Dorsey in a world that's angry at social media.
It's possible that Tweet has been deleted.
The decision to permanently ban Donald Trump's account was made by one of the company's deputy CEOs, but the CEO stuck by them. This is bravery next to Zuck's approach, which was to suspend Trump pending a decision of Facebook's independent oversight board. It was also in line with the decisions of the company to ban all political ads on the site, and to cover Trump's statements about violence with warning labels.
After January 6, Facebook tried to root out private groups where the insurrection had been planned. In a single day, he nuked 70,000 accounts.
Both social services have been the target of bad-faith attacks from the GOP who want to play the ref by complaining of left-wing bias. It happened again on Monday when Parag was attacked for a 10-year-old message on The Daily Show about white supremacists. The top 10 most engaged posts on the service every day are from conservative media sources, as a result of the changes Facebook made when it dropped its trending topics. Facebook cut off their access to internal information when researchers pointed this out.
This kind of pressure never came to him. Over the past year, he has seen off threats from a prominent Republican billionaire donor who was buying up Twitter shares in order to oust the CEO. The threat of a takeover has since dissipated, as he was appeased with new sources of revenue. He's been subtly changing his mind about how reliable and fun it is to follow a person on the micro-messaging service. The day Facebook went down, the "hello literally everyone" message on the micro-blogging site was one of the most-liked.
It was chaos and cluelessness that began the tenure of Dorsey, but he ended with many decisions that other tech leaders would do well to copy.
We shouldn't fall into the trap of grading a rich white male on a curve. Back when users were begging for the ability to report abusive and dangerous messages so often that "just ban the Nazis, Jack" became a popular meme, tech CEO Dorsey seemed oblivious. He wrote a long thread about his meditation retreat, went on fasts, and seemed hung up on the idea that all we needed to do in a moment of moral crisis was follow users outside our political bubbles. Peace and love would happen.
A flawed hero can still be a hero if they make the right choices. It was chaos and cluelessness that began the tenure of Dorsey, but he ended with many decisions that other tech leaders would do well to copy. One of the first companies to give its employees the option of working from home permanently was Twitter. Nearly a third of his fortune was devoted to COVID-19 efforts.
At the right time, Dorsey gave the stage to Agrawal and went off to focus on his other company, Square, and his beloved criptocurrency world. At a time when we're not very sick of him. If Mark wants to be a movie-worthy character again, he should follow in the footsteps of the shy programmer who grew up.
