Jack Dorsey explains his new obsession

How the next wave of technology is upending the global economy and its power structures

Apr 10, 2023 View in browser   By Ben Schreckinger With help from Derek Robertson Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testifies during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol. | House Energy and Commerce Committee via AP On Friday, while Twitter’s new management was stirring up a fresh round of controversy, the head of Twitter’s old management remained blissfully unaware of the turmoil. Jack Dorsey, the guru-esque former CEO of Twitter, hasn’t been seen on his old platform since January. Instead, he’s been spending his time on NOSTR, an open-source social media protocol launched in 2020 that has become popular with Bitcoin enthusiasts. That includes Dorsey, who has been posting up a stream-of-consciousness storm lately on the network. On Friday, amid Dorsey’s posting tsunami, I created a NOSTR identity for myself to learn more about its users’ decentralized vision for social media’s future. To access the network, I used the Damus iPhone app, one of several software clients available for accessing the protocol. I found the Damus user experience comparable to Twitter’s, but clunkier, and with some minor issues getting a custom profile picture and wallpaper image to stick. I also decided to ask Dorsey himself about NOSTR. In a brief Friday afternoon interview with DFD, Dorsey said he had not even heard about Twitter’s decision to block engagement with tweets that link to the rival platform Substack. Instead, he pushed for his vision of an internet in which fights over the power of social media platforms would essentially cease to be relevant. Dorsey was the face of Twitter during Donald Trump’s rise to power, when the platform’s capacity for un-mediated online conversation upended political communication in the U.S. and much of the rest of world. But in late 2021, he left the CEO job to focus on his payments startup Square, which he rebranded Block — as in blockchain — to focus on his vision for “Web5,” a Bitcoin-centric decentralized internet. In recent months, Dorsey has become increasingly focused on this new social media protocol as a potential vehicle for his decentralized internet vision. It's a protocol, like email, that anyone can build software on top of. Users access the network with a personalized private key — essentially a password that they are responsible for keeping track of (there’s no one to reset it if they lose it), that lets them retain control of their identity no matter which software interface they use to access the network. It’s sort of like the right to take your phone number with you when you switch cell service providers, except that right is baked into the code of the protocol itself. Because anyone can set up a NOSTR server, content or accounts blocked by one server can still be found on other servers, and NOSTR clients tend to scan several servers to avoid missing posts. In December, shortly after publishing a blog post reflecting on content moderation in response to the Twitter files, Dorsey donated 14 Bitcoin — then worth roughly a quarter million dollars — to support the protocol’s development. He last posted on Twitter in late January to note that a NOSTR client, Damus, had become available in the Apple store. Since then, he has been prolific on NOSTR, offering his thoughts on everything from the World Economic Forum (“dangerous”) to methods for lowering your heart rate (“breathe through your nose always”). On Friday alone, he posted over 100 times, including replies. In the middle of all that posting, Dorsey agreed to be interviewed, with a catch: “We can interview in the replies, not the DMs. Open interview.” In the resultant back-and-forth, Dorsey revealed that Block is working on NOSTR-compatible products. He declined to offer any further response to a March report by short-seller Hindenburg Research that argues Block's Cash App has inflated user numbers. He also argued that the user experience on NOSTR had already surpassed that of Twitter, citing “Zaps” a feature that lets users tip each other in Bitcoin — part of a vision in which information and money flow together around the internet without obstruction. Dorsey said he was unaware of Twitter’s recent Substack blockade, but didn't seem to like the idea: “I don’t believe Twitter should block any links,” he wrote (immediately following the interview, he published several “notes” — NOSTR’s term for a post — bringing attention to the rift). He also said NOSTR was becoming popular outside the Bitcoiner niche, citing a “Growing artist community” that he said would be drawn in by the tipping function. “That will grow faster with zaps and the fact we finally have global permissionless payments on the internet.” Dorsey’s chosen interview format matched the “open” theme around which he’s staking his business career and personal brand. His followers peppered the thread with their own commentary during the back-and-forth, and Dorsey engaged them in conversation during the proceedings. Following the exchange, Dorsey announced it would form the model for his new personal media policy: “No more closed interviews for me. Over NOSTR or live pods only.” At a time when no one can agree who should have power to police social media content, a system designed to be controlled by no one holds obvious appeal, especially when it integrates payments and gives individual users control of their identities. But the value of a general-purpose communications network is highly dependent on attracting a large number of users. More than a million NOSTR “accounts” have been created (the number of individual humans actually using it is harder to estimate), but real mass adoption faces a behavioral obstacle: To date, most internet users have been happy to trade away control of their identity for the convenience and scale offered by centralized platforms. For anyone who doesn’t want to talk about Bitcoin and the structure of the internet all day, NOSTR offers slim pickings. It would take something like artists — or a critical mass of Dorsey-level public figures — flocking to the network to provide a level of vibrancy that would make the transition worth it for average netizens. Either that or the protocol needs to play host to a series of extremely compelling interviews-in-the-replies, conducted exclusively by DFD... To make sure you don’t miss the next round of live NOSTR interviews, you can follow me on the protocol using my public key: npub1vz4yqatycf5tlk4swknndaryrd84xs266a2xtp6ucvpj7pm0tmkqzfq7se   GO INSIDE THE 2023 MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE: POLITICO is proud to partner with the Milken Institute to produce a special edition "Global Insider" newsletter featuring exclusive coverage, insider nuggets and unparalleled insights from the 2023 Global Conference, which will convene leaders in health, finance, politics, philanthropy and entertainment from April 30-May 3. This year’s theme, Advancing a Thriving World, will challenge and inspire attendees to lean into building an optimistic coalition capable of tackling the issues and inequities we collectively face. Don’t miss a thing — subscribe today for a front row seat.     gop on ccp Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) emerges from the office of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) at the U.S. Capitol March 7, 2023. | Francis Chung/POLITICO Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.), Chair of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, met with top tech executives over the weekend to talk about the U.S.’ relationship with China on emerging tech, as POLITICO’s Mohar Chatterjee in today’s Morning Tech newsletter. The big takeaways: Gallagher said “there was nearly unanimous support” for restricting U.S. investment in Chinese AI. “For example, Sequoia should not be allowed to invest in Baidu,” he said. “It’s very hard to defend that position given that we are neck and neck with China in AI right now.” And on the country’s nascent blockchain platform, Gallagher said its “potential widespread adoption will allow the CCP to get closer to their global surveillance goals,” as Mohar wrote. And to put a fine point on the political ramifications of the U.S.’ rapidly intensifying tech competition with China for the wary, globally-minded execs, Gallagher noted that he specifically asked Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to name the committee after the “Chinese Communist Party” rather than the nation itself, saying “the Chinese people are not our enemy,” and that “The more we make that distinction, I think the more successful our policy will be and we’ll avoid any accusations of anti-Asian sentiment.” — Derek Robertson sounding the ai alarm Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly and a handful of other Biden administration officials sat with the Atlantic Council for a discussion on U.S. cybersecurity that, like seemingly everything in 2023, eventually touched on AI. During the conversation, Easterly compared the development of security guardrails around AI to that of the early internet — and not favorably. “We are hurtling forward in a way that I think is not the right level of responsibility, implementing AI capabilities in production, without any legal barriers, without any regulation,” Easterly said. She also unfavorably compared AI development to another, more overtly sinister technology: “The most powerful weapons of the last century were nuclear weapons,” Easterly said. “They were controlled by governments and there was no incentive to use them. It was a disincentive to use them… we do not have the legal regimes … or the regulatory regimes to be able to implement them safely and effectively.” Easterly called on the government to “figure that out in the very near term.” (For a more optimistic perspective on its ability to do so read POLITICO’s Alfred Ng’s interview with FTC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, published last week for Pro subscribers.) — Derek Robertson tweet of the day the future in 5 links The environmental cost of Bitcoin mining is growing more and more apparent. …Meanwhile, Ethereum is finally preparing to sever all ties to the mining process. Learn what makes Pope Francis such an appealing subject for AI-generated art. Microsoft and Google are throwing caution to the wind in the race for AI supremacy. Meta’s VR department is taking a hefty chunk out of the company’s payroll. Stay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreckinger (bschreckinger@politico.com); Derek Robertson (drobertson@politico.com); Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@politico.com); Steve Heuser (sheuser@politico.com); and Benton Ives (bives@politico.com). Follow us @DigitalFuture on Twitter. Ben Schreckinger covers tech, finance and politics for POLITICO; he is an investor in cryptocurrency. If you’ve had this newsletter forwarded to you, you can sign up and read our mission statement at the links provided.   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.       Follow us on Twitter Ben Schreckinger @SchreckReports Derek Robertson @afternoondelete Steve Heuser @sfheuser Benton Ives @BentonIves   Follow us

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