A disorienting interview with Jack Dorsey on his Myanmar tweets, right-wing extremism, and what he'd do if Trump called on his followers to murder journalists
which was really nice of him considering her initial approach https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ ... pic.twitter.com/hdu3AgEArL Richard Lawler / @rjcc : No one has ever had access to more information while knowing less than Jack Dorsey does right now. Owen Ellickson / @onlxn : props to @ashleyfeinberg on conducting a merciless, skillful interview, and props to @jack for letting it happen to him. a must-read https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ ... Katie Rogers / @katierogers : This is a terrific Q&A because it illustrates how the CEO of Twitter refuses to accept broader responsibility, change his approach or offer new solutions for the platform. Lol'd when @ashleyfeinberg told him deleting the site would have massive impact. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ ... Christopher Mathias / @letsgomathias : In case you were wondering what it would take for Jack Dorsey to kick Trump off Twitter... it's not Trump calling for the murder of journalists: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ ... ... via @ashleyfeinberg pic.twitter.com/5xFAvd0GOb Laura J. Nelson / @laura_nelson : The mantra of journalists everywhere: “Those are certainly words, though none of them appeared to answer my question.” https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ ... Cristina López G. / @crislopezg : About his apology to far-right figure Candace Owens, Jack Dorsey told HuffPost's @ashleyfeinberg that he doesn't believe in categorizing people and that instead, he wants to describe “instances” — well, here are some instances of Candace Owens far-righting af: pic.twitter.com/cmkMLdU28K Robowitch / @posiposer : Jack Dorsey has a shock collar for if he says something that isn't totally servile to even mild Republican criticism https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ ... pic.twitter.com/3jsqeMBMC1 Ace Anbender / @aceanbender : there's a bunch of scary, awful stuff in here but the moment @jack and @ashleyfeinberg switched roles was delightful. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ ... pic.twitter.com/CDu7mufXpC Josh Constine / @joshconstine : Deeply worrying interview with Jack Dorsey reveals why Twitter's product evolves so slowly: he's wishy-washy on every question http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ ... @profjeffjarviss : This is absolutely the worst cyberbullying I have seen on this website. Zero respect for a great innovator. Shame on you, @ashleyfeinberg. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ ... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
This HuffPost interview is the third act in Jack Dorsey's running public-accountability problem. His 2017 Backchannel interview already had him defending Twitter's handling of harassment, and by August 2018 he was convening executives in Friday meetings over Infowars and 'dehumanizing speech' with no new policy emerging.
The immediate trigger was the backlash to his December tweets about visiting Myanmar, which praised the country while ignoring the genocide social media helped enable. Interviewer Ashley Feinberg used that opening to push him on whether anything at all — including Trump calling on followers to murder journalists — would cross his line. His answers: an apology to Candace Owens, a preference for describing individual instances over categorizing people, and no suspension of Trump even in the hypothetical. The reaction quotes in the piece land on the same verdict: unprecedented access to information, minimal acceptance of responsibility.
First-order effects
- Dorsey personally commits, on the record, to not suspending Trump even if Trump urged followers to murder journalists — removing any ambiguity about where Twitter's enforcement ceiling sits while Trump remains a user.
- Journalists and press-freedom advocates become the direct constituency of the hypothetical, and the interview hands them a quotable artifact of the CEO declining to draw a line at incitement against them.
Second-order effects
- The internal policy work visible since the Infowars meetings — drafting definitions of 'dehumanizing speech' and rules for world leaders — now has to contend with a CEO whose stated position forecloses the strictest outcomes, constraining whatever Twitter's trust-and-safety team can ship.
- Rivals and advertisers get a clearer read on Twitter as the platform least willing to categorize or remove powerful accounts, sharpening the differentiation other networks exploit when courating users and brands sensitive to extremism adjacency.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — interviews in 2017, 2018, and 2019 each ending with responsibility deferred — the pressure migrates from the CEO to the structural question of whether platforms hosting heads of state should carry liability for what those accounts amplify, rather than relying on executive judgment.
- The episode feeds the longer arc toward external enforcement: legislators, advertisers, and other platforms filling the vacuum left by a founder-led company that declines to write its own red lines.
The trend: Platform CEOs are being pushed from case-by-case moderation discretion toward externally imposed rules for political accounts, with Twitter under Dorsey as the most resistant holdout.