Making Sense with Sam Harris #148: Jack Dorsey
Running two public companies at the same time has pushed me to focus on my health. A big part of that is mental health. That starts with how I think about things. The companies will benefit from me focusing on self-improvement. I don’t really segment the parts of my day. It is one job.
Twitter’s purpose is serving public conversation. Square’s mission is economic empowerment.
Centralized control of systems removes access from people. When we first started Square we discovered you could only accept credit cards with a good credit score. A lot of entrepreneurs that are just getting started don’t have a good credit score. I didn’t have good credit when I started. I was in massive credit card debt. We are building tools for people that don’t have access to the old system. Some people are using Cash App as their only bank account.
My goal for Twitter is for people to learn something every time they use it.
I like the idea of changing the like button to one that says thanks. This would build a way for people to express gratitude instead of an empty like button.
I don’t think Twitter is a social network. My definition of a social network is a network-dependent upon the people you know. Dependent on the address book in your phone. Twitter is centered around interests and topics. That is something very different.
[Interesting idea to mimic biology when thinking about product development.] Your body has indicators that help determine health. One of those is temperature. If your temperature is above 98.6 something is wrong. We’ve been thinking about the idea of measuring conversational health. We will have to figure out what those measurements are. Then build tools to measure and fix conversations on Twitter.
I go through all my mentions. I have to experience it directly. I need to experience it all because I want to fix Twitter. By doing so I gain empathy for what everyone else on the platform is experiencing.
The future is no centralized control or censorship of content. I think we are headed toward a world where, due to evolutions of blockchain technology, all forms of content will exist forever.