Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: ‘I Don’t Think’ Follower System Is ‘Right’

Following Twitter co-founder Ev Williams’ criticism of the social network’s follower system last week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also criticized the system, Monday.

“It is actually incentivizing you to increase that number. That may have been right 12 years ago, but I don’t think it is right today,” declared Dorsey during a speech in New Delhi, India, on Monday. “I think what is more important is the number of meaningful conversations you’re having on the platform. How many times do you receive a reply?”

During Dorsey’s trip to New Delhi, the Twitter CEO also met with the Dalai Lama.

Going to meet with the @DalaiLama

— jack (@jack) November 10, 2018

Thank you @DalaiLama. You’re an amazing teacher.

Also: thank you for not actually pulling out my nose ring, despite a lot of painful effort. pic.twitter.com/fEYtui5EY0

— jack (@jack) November 10, 2018

Last week, at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, Twitter co-founder and former CEO Evan Williams criticized Twitter’s follower system.

“I think showing follower counts was probably ultimately detrimental,” Williams proclaimed. “It really put in your face that the game was popularity.”

“It’s easy to say in retrospect — today — maybe we shouldn’t have follower counts… A lot of these things drove growth, and if we hadn’t had them, maybe someone else would have done them and built a much more dominant platform,” he continued, adding, “But today that’s not necessarily healthy.”