Jack Dorsey Criticizes Elon Musk In The Handling Of Twitter Under His Leadership

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who once said he was happy to have Elon Musk join the company’s board, is now criticizing the controversial CEO and his handling of the company. 

On Friday, users on Dorsey’s Twitter alternative Bluesky asked if Musk had proven himself to be the “best possible” leader for the platform.

“No. Nor do I think he acted right after realizing his timing was bad. Nor do I think the board should have forced the sale. It all went south,” Dorsey replied, according to the Insider. 

One Bluesky user noted how unfortunate Twitter’s acquisition by Musk was. In response, Dorsey agreed but noted that the social media platform “would have never survived as a public company.”

“Would you rather have had it owned by hedge funds and Wall Street activists? That was the only alternative,” Dorsey added. 

Bluesky is a new social media platform that Dorsey had co-founded that has a similar platform to Twitter. Jay Garber is currently the CEO while Dorsey is only a board member of the company. New users have to join a wait list to be part of the plaform.

“If Elon or anyone wanted to buy the company, all they had to do was name a price that the board felt was better than what the company could do independently. This is true for every public company. Was I optimistic? Yes. Did I have the final say? No. I think he should have walked away and paid the $1b,” Dorsey continued. 

In the last year, Musk has faced backlash following his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. He recently came under fire for rolling out Twitter Blue, a subscription program that charges users $8 a month in order to keep the blue checkmarks that help verify their identities.

In reference to the service, Dorsey wrote on Bluesky that “[payment] as proof of human is a trap,” adding, “I’m not aligned with that. The payment systems being used for that proof exclude millions if not billions of people.”

This isn’t the first time Dorsey has criticized Musk. When Twitter faced a significant outage in February, Dorsey voiced his displeasure over Musk’s handling of it.

In December 2022, Dorsey also commented on Musk’s release of the “Twitter Files” in a blog post, naming “three principles” that he’d come to believe based on his past actions as Twitter CEO: social media resilience to corporate and government control, exclusive control over content removal limited to original authors and moderation through algorithmic choice Unfortunately, Dorsey said, “The Twitter when I led it and the Twitter of today do not meet any of these principles.”

Former Twitter executives were issued a subpoena by Congress in blocking the story about Hunter Biden that was uncovered about the story of his laptop. Twitter at the time blocked users from sharing the story for several days.

Yael Roth, former Twitter executive, said that he wanted to avoid a repeat mistake in 2016 that alluded to Russia’s hacking of the DNC emails. The files consisted of internal emails and Slack chats prior to Musk’s ownership of the social media giant.

“I believe Twitter erred in this case because we wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016,” Roth said in his testimony to Congress.

The files also disclosed the Biden campaign to review tweets that would violate its polices.

Produced in association with Benzinga