jack dorsey
Latest
Twitter's Trust and Safety advisors say the company isn't listening
It's been three years since Twitter formed its Trust and Safety Council, tasked with combatting abuse and harassment plaguing the platform. According to a recent report from Wired, things aren't going well. A number of members on the council sent a letter to Twitter leadership this week expressing concerns that the company is no longer listening to their recommendations. In some acses, members claim that Twitter has months without responding to messages from council members.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey met with Donald Trump today
Donald Trump has been linked with Twitter since well before he ran for president, and now he's had an Oval Office meeting with the company's CEO. Motherboard reported, based on two sources, that an internal email thread revealed a meeting between Trump, Jack Dorsey and other company executives According to those messages, the company expected it to be about "the health of the public conversation on Twitter." Without specifics it's impossible to know exactly what the meeting might have covered. So-called shadow bans, actual bans, more actual bans, quickly-reversed bans, potential bans -- who knows? Trump tweeted afterward: "Lots of subjects discussed regarding their platform, and the world of social media in general." Update: Per a Twitter spokesperson, "Jack had a constructive meeting with the President of the United States today at the president's invitation. They discussed Twitter's commitment to protecting the health of the public conversation ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections and efforts underway to respond to the opioid crisis." The Washington Post cites a source claiming a "significant portion" of the meeting focused on the president's belief that Twitter deliberately removed a number of his followers, which the company has said can happen as it deals with spam accounts.
Twitter says new tools automatically flag 38 percent of abusive tweets
Twitter gave a status update on Tuesday on its plans to target online harassment, which, the company claims, appear to be working. The platform has made "meaningful progress" in moving towards its goal of cutting down on abuse of the platform, wrote Twitter Vice President Donald Hicks. Specifically, more abusive accounts are getting suspended than this time last year, abusive tweets are being automatically flagged for the first time and repeat offenders are being blocked from opening new accounts.
A week with Twitter's attempt at a more civil internet
Over the past few months, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has been adamant that one of his goals is to "increase the health of public conversation" on the site. Because it's no secret that, as great as Twitter is at connecting you with people across the world, it's also great at connecting you with bots, trolls and spam. Unsurprisingly, Twitter wants to change that. And it's hoping to find a solution by publicly testing new conversation features, through an experimental program that users can apply to participate in. This launched last week as an app called Twttr, which I've been using as my main tool for reading and writing tweets for the past week.
Square will offer its new crypto employees payment in Bitcoin
Payments startup Square is turning its attention to cryptocurrency. According to tweets from CEO Jack Dorsey, the company is hiring engineers and a designer to "work full-time on open source contributions to the bitcoin/crypto ecosystem."
Recommended Reading: The best of the Best Pictures
The Best Picture championship belt Adam Nayman and Sean Fennessey, The Ringer This year's installment of the Academy Awards is set for February 24th, but ahead of the festivities, The Ringer is looking back at the best Best Pictures with a unique spin. The outlet has applied a WWE-style championship belt to the list of winners, including how long it reigned, who it defeated during that time and more. Is it silly? Yes. Is it a very entertaining read? Absolutely.
Twitter can’t separate verification from validation
2016 was a dumpster fire of a year for Twitter. Abusive language and toxic interaction became the norm across the microblogging site as it saw a dramatic rise in activity from users on the far right and their crystallization into the alt-right movement. But for as painful as last year was for the company, 2017 has seen it steadfastly refuse to do little else but pour more gasoline on the flames.
After Math: Everything is Awesome
It's been a wonderful week for the tech industry. Twitter is finally getting its act together regarding hateful content and Russian election interferences, major industry players released their Q3 earnings (Hint: They all made boatloads of money), and the FBI continues to prove that your phone's encryption can withstand their hacking attempts. Numbers because how else will you know how many highs to five?
Jack Dorsey: New Square register will accept both Apple Pay and Bitcoin
Apple Pay won't be active until sometime next month, but companies in the payment space are already reacting to the newest kid on the block. Some, like PayPal, have resorted to fear-mongering. Others, like Square, are making adjustments to welcome Apple's new mobile payments platform with open arms. Originally reported by Andrea Bellemare of CBCNews and subsequently relayed by Wired, Square CEO Jack Dorsey has said that Square is planning on building a register capable of handling Apple Pay payments. And in an effort to make sure all the boxes are checked, Square's new register will also accept BitCoin payments. "We're building a register so that sellers can accept a credit card, so they can accept cash, so they can accept a cheque, so they can accept Bitcoin and so they can accept any form of payment that comes across the counter including future ones and burgeoning ones like Apple Pay," Dorsey told the CBC this week, speaking at the opening of Square's new Canadian offices in Kitchener, Ontario. This certainly seems like a smart approach. Assuming that Apple Pay is bound to become a common method of payment, it's a good move for Square to be prepared ahead of time. About two weeks ago, Dorsey said that Apple Pay doesn't pose a threat to Square's business as the two platforms provide different services. It's not a threat because ... we don't build a credit card, we don't build a payment device at all. They're building something that allows a credit card to be used in another place, but they're not building a terminal. We are a terminal, we a register and we accept payments, so there's no threat, there's no competition there at all.
Square's new cash register will take Bitcoin, Apple Pay and much more
Every now and again, a conspiracy theorist will tell us that the illuminati will abandon national currencies in favor of a single, worldwide form of payment. Given the myriad ways that we currently use to empty our bank account, we're not sure how a single, all-purpose payment system would be a bad thing. That's why Square is hoping to aid our plight by building a new cash register that'll accept as many new-fangled forms of payment as possible, including Bitcoin and Apple Pay. In an interview with CBC, CEO Jack Dorsey said that he hopes Square's new hardware will take "any form of payment that comes across the counter," before mentioning the cryptocurrency and Apple's new commerce platform by name. When asked if he was concerned about Apple taking his business, the executive responded that since the iPhone maker isn't building a terminal (i.e. a cash register), there's no threat to Square's immediate future. There's no word on when exactly this new swiss army knife of buying will start appearing in small businesses across the country, but we doubt it'll be long before you can buy coffee with Bitcoin without having to use a third-party exchange.
Square Register for iOS now works even without an internet connection
Jack Dorsey's little credit card machine that could only really had one major flaw: it only worked with an internet connection. That's not an issue any more, thanks to an update to the Square Register iOS app which now lets you accept payments offline, as long as you upload them within 72 hours. You can set a limit on the value of each transaction, automatically set yo $100, since you'll lose out on any declined sales that weren't verified at the time. Still, if you trust your customers and have spotty WiFi, then it's probably worth checking out.
Weekly Roundup: 2013 Mac Pro review, judge okays NSA spying and more!
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Daily Roundup: 2013 Mac Pro review, Jack Dorsey joins Disney, Google powered robots and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Paper for iPad developer receives $15 million in funding
What do you do when your one and only iPad app is a runaway success? If you're FiftyThree, the development firm behind the beautiful journal / art app Paper (free, many in-app purchases available), you get funding for expansion into new areas. FiftyThree announced today that it received US$15 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreesen Horowitz, with such stellar investors as Twitter's Jack Dorsey, Bright Capital, Highline Ventures and SV Angel joining the party. Paper has been profitable from day one; it's usually in the Top 10 Paid Apps on the App Store, and over 80 million users have downloaded the app. What's FiftyThree planning on doing with $15 million? Co-founder and CEO Georg Petschnigg says that he wants to add to his team of employees in Seattle and NYC, and create a suite of software, hardware and services. GigaOM's Erica Ogg talked with Petschnigg and although he wouldn't elaborate, the idea of a Paper-branded stylus is a natural outgrowth. Petschnigg's big picture for the firm appears to be collaboration: "We've been focused on iPad there, but the next part we're working on is services that will start to answer the question of how people work together and collaborate." All secretive talk aside, we're looking forward to seeing what's next from the team at FiftyThree.
Square brings its mobile payments service to Japan
Jack Dorsey's little card reader that could TM has made its first journey beyond continental North America, and is now available in Japan. In order to make the leap, Square has teamed up with Sumitomo Mitsui Card Corporation, the business that introduced Visa to the country. The transaction rate for the service is 3.25 percent, up half a percent from the 2.75 percent payable in North America and Canada. It's been a long time coming, considering that PayPal Here arrived in Japan over a year ago -- but hopefully now the pair can slug it out in the streets of Tokyo, Super Sentai style.
Starbucks switches to Square for payments, invests $25 million and will support Pay with Square
While Square's mobile payment processing platform has already picked up some major players in retail to go along with more than a million small businesses, its biggest shot in the arm to date is a new partnership with Starbucks. The chain will use Square to process credit card payments in nearly 7,000 US locations along with investing $25 million in the company, while Starbucks president, chairman and CEO Howard Shulz is joining its Board of Directors. Also notable for Square is that this fall Starbucks will be pushing features like its Pay with Square app that lets customers pay via iOS and Android apps, as well as the Square Directory of local businesses. In a letter, Square CEO Jack Dorsey pushed the platform as a way enhance local businesses and communities, but we'll see how friendly your local coffeeshop employees are when a familiar green logo shares their payment processor.
Square's perimeter gets larger, now sold at UPS and OfficeMax locations
What's a company to do once it grabs a million merchants? Grab a million more, naturally. Following an online rollout and a wider spread to Apple Stores, Jack Dorsey's own Square is expanding to OfficeMax and UPS locations. A couple of months back, the outfit announced that it was handling some $11 million in payments per day (a wild increase from $4 million per day in July), and with the new agreements, Square payment devices are being sold at 10,000 retail locations. The hardware itself will sell for $9.99 in stores, but each buyer can redeem a $10 credit to their bank account. Beyond this? It's reportedly hoping to "upgrade the experience of running a business, end-to-end, on the iPad," with the outfit adding "in-depth merchant analytics to its iPad experience, allowing merchants to access information about which inventory is selling well, and what they can do to help make more money." Oh, and in case you couldn't guess, Square's also looking to staff up even more to tackle all of 2012's goals -- three cheers for job creation, yeah?
Square snags one million merchants, liberates the cashless
For those of us addicted to plastic, "I love you" hardly holds the same clout as those three magical words: "we accept credit." Taking the dream one step closer to plastic payment monogamy is the mobile checkout service, Square. According to founder Jack Dorsey, the company has hit a milestone today, signing up over one million small business owners ready to swipe. For merchants, all it takes is a Square reader and an iPhone, iPad or Android to start processing the plastic of the cash-o-phobic -- practically rendering those ATM pit stops pre-taco run or flea market excursion useless.
Square makes a larger mark on the brick-and-mortar scene, available in more outlets
Best Buy, Target, Walmart, The Shack, Apple. All of the above are now proudly selling the Square credit card reader, according to a tweet sent out by CEO Jack Dorsey. It's great news for anyone willing to shell out a ten-spot in order to conduct business from their iOS device right away, rather than waiting between two and five days for a free one to show up in the mail. If you need one today, you'd best be calling up your local retail outlet to make sure they have some in stock.
VeriFone's new Payware Mobile Enterprise for Tablets looks a little Square
VeriFone added a new wrinkle to its ongoing battle for mobile payment supremacy yesterday, with the announcement of Payware Mobile Enterprise for Tablets -- a peripheral that will allow retailers to process transactions directly from any slate. Much like the company's Payware Mobile system, VeriFone's latest product involves a magnetic card reader and accompanying app that can turn any iPad or Android tablet into a handheld checkout unit. Geared toward larger enterprises, the new device also supports PIN verification for debit cards and NFC payments, rendering it compatible with Google Wallet, though it likely won't see a widespread release until 2012. Perhaps more intriguing is what this move could mean for the company's notoriously heated rivalry with Square. By explicitly targeting bigger retailers, VeriFone seems to be distinguishing itself from the small business-focused Square, despite the fact that its new product looks a lot like one of Jack Dorsey's creations -- or, as some CEOs would call them, "skimming devices."
