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regular-article-logo Sunday, 05 May 2024

Jack and the peace-talk

The name’s Dorsey and he is a nerd-cum-entrepreneur, no more required to be possessed of a conscience or prize it over bottomline than your Adani or Ambani

Upala Sen Published 15.08.21, 12:09 AM
Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi File Picture

Around the time Twitter suspended the account of Rahul Gandhi and several other Opposition leaders, the founder of the social media platform was spelling out his world vision. Jack Dorsey tweeted: “Bitcoin will unite a deeply divided country [United States]. And eventually: world.” And this might come as a shock to Mr Gandhi because during his 2018 maiden India visit, Dorsey met the Dalai Lama before he met him, but Dorsey’s take on world peace is this --- “… my hope is that [bitcoin] creates world peace”.

Paid back in bitcoin

So don’t be fooled by the beard and, so what if you think a blue tick is as good as a halo and no matter what pandemic evangelism you might have pulled off riding the platform --- the founder of Twitter is not Mr God. The name’s Dorsey and he is a nerd-cum-entrepreneur, no more required to be possessed of a conscience or prize it over bottomline than your Adani or Ambani. When he holds forth on how “focus on one thing isn’t hate of the others”, he is not spewing a life view — stop focusing on the beard — but arguing against all cryptocurrency except for bitcoin. When he talks about Twitter’s future, he is sure that bitcoin will be a big part of it. And when he said in June, “I don’t think there is anything more important in my lifetime to work on,” he was still on bitcoin.

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Extracensory perception

When Dorsey talks blue sky and decentralisation, he is actually tech-talking; bluesky is the name for Twitter’s decentralised social networking effort. And notwithstanding his I-do-not-celebrate-or-feel-pride thread following Twitter’s decision to suspend Donald Trump’s account, it is a fact that the “right decision” was taken only when Joe Biden had secured victory in the US presidential polls and Trump’s countdown had begun. So the shock at Twitter’s censory behaviour is bizarre. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, whose account has been suspended, said, “It’s obvious now that Twitter is actually not a neutral, objective platform… they are interfering in our political process… And as a politician I don’t like that.”

To think, as a politician he believed as much.

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