Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has been openly critical of Elon Musk’s actions since Musk acquired the platform, and engaged in a little whining on Friday during Matt Taibbi’s “Twitter Files” thread by asking why naming names was necessary and that it “seems dangerous.” Saturday night brought a few more tweets from Stone that seemingly admits that the site engaged in a lot more than mere censorship.
Stone’s first tweet just complains about Musk:
“He’s not a serious person. He does things for sport that have serious consequences for real people. This is an open, global service. US politics is not much of Twitter. (K-pop might be bigger.) Also, in other places lives are at stake.”
He’s not a serious person. He does things for sport that have serious consequences for real people. This is an open, global service. US politics is not much of Twitter. (K-pop might be bigger.) Also, in other places lives are at stake.
— Biz Stone (@biz) December 4, 2022
Jason Goldman, who was part of the start-up team at Twitter as VP Product before joining the Obama White House as its first Chief Digital Officer, then chimed in, saying:
“This is the most painful part and where I get worked up. Honestly if the thing just died in a fire so be it. Sites die. But he’s acting with such a reckless and incurious disregard to the consequences of his actions. Because he’s never had to deal with any.”
Hmm. Seems like Goldman either has a bit of jealousy toward Musk or knows something the rest of us don’t. But, his words are pretty much par for the course when it comes to tech bros talking about Musk these days. What Stone had to say next is the real eyebrow-raiser.
It’s heartbreaking. All the world events we didn’t make public to protect brave people. Also, on the Trump poll, “The people have spoken!” How many Russians voted? It’s global. That’s not what we made it for…Chief. Oy.
— Biz Stone (@biz) December 4, 2022
Stone replied:
“It’s heartbreaking. All the world events we didn’t make public to protect brave people. Also, on the Trump poll, “The people have spoken!” How many Russians voted? It’s global. That’s not what we made it for…Chief. Oy.”
All the world events they didn’t make public to protect brave people? While there’s always the possibility that Stone is trolling, and his fixation on the poll Musk conducted to supposedly determine whether or not he would allow Donald Trump back on the platform is a little odd in the context of the Twitter Files, his comments could also be a bit of a confession. They absolutely raise some questions. As venture capitalist David Sacks asked:
“All the world events you didn’t make public” –> what are you referring to?
In addition, what does he mean by, “That’s not what we made it for”? It’s a microblogging site. Goldman’s LinkedIn says of the site:
“I started using Twitter in May 2006 during a trip to Las Vegas with Evan Williams and, despite the fact that I was still at Google, I knew it was the next thing I wanted to work on. In Twitter, I saw an even purer strain of the idea that fascinated me about Blogger: making better humans by getting them to share their observations of the world around them.”
Stone’s says:
“Co-invented and built a real-time information network used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.”
It sounds like that poll goes to exactly what the platform was created for, unless there’s a lot more to the story. Undoubtedly, there’s more to the story.
