The man who turned Donald Trump off: Jack Dorsey’s invention has been causing huge controversy for years

Twitter boss Jack Dorsey became extremely rich with his 140-character invention – and incredibly powerful.

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When Jack Dorsey last appeared in public, he looked like a rock star: full beard, nose ring, styled hair. That was in November, two weeks after the presidential election, when Dorsey’s company – the short message service Twitter – had once again played an important role. The occasion was a hearing in the Senate in Washington, which also revolved around the question of whether “Big Tech” had unduly influenced the election campaign for the White House.

Dorsey, who joined the hearing from the kitchen of his house, denied the allegation. The 44-year-old American admitted that his company had not mastered every crisis perfectly. Dorsey firmly rejected the accusation that Twitter suppressed the free formation of opinion.

The Internet pioneer, whose fortune is estimated at around 13 billion dollars since Twitter became a mass phenomenon, has heard the censorship allegation. Characters like Donald Trump, who has long used Twitter as the primary communication channel, have made Dorsey’s network one of the most widely used social media platforms in the world. But the accusation has never been as loud as it is now.

Trump was just number 6 on Twitter

Dorsey’s decision to ban Donald Trump from Twitter for life after the January 6 events in Washington sparked a heated debate over freedom of expression on the Internet. Before his deletion, Trump’s Twitter account was sixth of the most influential accounts with more than 88 million followers – just ahead of Taylor Swift (88 million followers) and behind Cristiano Ronaldo (90.3 million followers) and, until recently, behind the most-followed Twitter User: Barack Obama (128 million followers).

Dorsey, however, can no longer hear the criticism and repeatedly points out that his father was a conservative Republican and that his mother positioned herself on the “other end” of the political spectrum. He learned from childhood to tolerate different opinions. Twitter draws a line where violence is openly encouraged.

Dorsey, who used to work as a model in addition to his programmer training and studied fashion design for a few semesters, took plenty of time with the decision to ban Trump. The man who finally muted the US president last week is considered to be weak. “Jack thinks about things at a different speed than the rest of us,” said an old friend from the Internet portal “Yahoo”.

Meditation in Myanmar and the police radio business

In addition, Dorsey likes to delegate decisions – also because he is rarely at the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. At the end of 2018, he said goodbye to the public for weeks to meditate in Myanmar.

Dorsey is generally considered an introvert. During his childhood, which he spent in St Louis, Missouri, and Boulder, Colorado, he suffered from a speech impairment that he only got under control as a teenager. He received his first computer, an IBM PC Junior, in 1984. He soon tried his hand at hacking and developed an obsession with police radio communications.

After a trip to New York, Dorsey arrived in 1999 in San Francisco, the center of the American technology industry. In July 2000 he launched the first Twitter predecessor, a program called “Stat.us”. But nobody was interested in the software, also because at the time only a few Americans owned a working smartphone. (Apple only launched the first iPhone model in June 2007.) But Dorsey did not give up. And in 2005, when he was working for an Internet company, he proposed to his boss that a more modern version of “Stat.us” should be launched. On March 21, 2006 @jack, as Dorsey calls himself on Twitter, published his first tweet: “just setting up my twttr”, I’m just setting up my Twitter account. The rest is history – just like Donald Trump’s account.

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