Jack Dorsey responds to his tone deaf Myanmar vacation tweets

Image: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Add Jack Dorsey’s name to the running list of white men who have issued non-apologies in 2018.

On December 8, the Twitter CEO shared reflections on his recent meditation retreat to Myanmar, a country whose army is killing and raping Rohingya Muslims “with genocidal intent.”

Some criticized the blind-eyed and tone deaf seeming thread in the days that followed. Now, Dorsey has issued what he called “more color” on his trip to Myanmar “given the resulting conversation.”

Dorsey took a 10-day silent meditation retreat to Myanmar to practice Vipassana meditation, which Dorsey described as a way to “hack the deepest layer of the mind and reprogram it” through pain and deprivation. He visited Myanmar because the practice originated in the country.

Putting aside the grossness of a billionaire visiting a third world country specifically in order to deprive himself of the worldly goods he so easily comes by, people criticized Dorsey specifically for the way he described Myanmar, and his unique position as a tech CEO.

See, the Rohingya genocide isn’t just any ethnically targeted mass-murder. In August, the United Nations found that Facebook had played a significant role in spreading the hate and disinformation that led to the expulsion, murder, and rape of Rohingya Muslims. The New York Times has gone so far to describe it as a “tool for ethnic cleansing.” From the UN’s final report, issued in September:

The role of social media is significant. Facebook has been a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate, in a context where, for most users, Facebook is the Internet. Although improved in recent months, the response of Facebook has been slow and ineffective. The extent to which Facebook posts and messages have led to real-world discrimination and violence must be independently and thoroughly examined. 

Facebook was the primary social media vehicle for fueling the Myanmar atrocities. But Twitter has also come under fire for enabling the hate speech that contributes to real-world violence in other instances. Twitter has taken steps to curb hate speech, but critics have specifically taken Dorsey to task for not acting more decisively to stamp out hate speech on his platform.

Now, for Dorsey to visit a country currently wracked by the consequences of hate and violence in the social media age, and to not even acknowledge it, smacked of insensitive privilege, and at least some deep irony about the Silicon Valley bubble.

So Dorsey apologized, sort of. He said it was a “purely personal” trip for him, only focused on meditation. He shared his perspective that Twitter is a place for people to “bear witness” to the Rohingya murders. And that he wants to continue working with NGOs and others for “feedback on how to best improve.”

Sorry, but how Twitter can improve is just not the point. Dorsey is able to shut out the turmoil and violence of the world he helped create by taking part in á la carte tourism and spirituality. Meanwhile, those less fortunate are reaping the consequences in the same country in which a tech CEO chooses to vacation. A non-apology that, most generously read, focuses on what Twitter can do now, subsumes social media founders’ complicity in creating the reality, which they have the luxury to escape.

Should Jack be allowed to take a vacation? Sure, it’s been a tough year, to say the least. But, in Myanmar, he happened to do so in spectacularly tone deaf fashion. So maybe a little “feedback on how to best improve” is sorely needed.