Jack Dorsey no longer thinks Elon Musk is the right person to run Twitter

Washington () — Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, on Saturday backed down from his previous endorsement of Elon Musk as the right choice to lead the company, speaking out against the billionaire who, for the past six months, has led Twitter to through a series of largely self-inflicted crises.

At Bluesky, Dorsey’s Twitter-like new social media venture, he was asked if he thought Musk had been the best possible manager of Twitter. Then Dorsey responded flatly: “No.”

He added that Musk “should have walked away” from the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, blaming the company’s board in retrospect for trying to force Musk to go through with the deal despite his attempts to back out of the deal. bought it last year.

“Everything went south,” Dorsey said. “But it already happened and all we can do now is build something to prevent that from happening again.”

Twitter, which under Musk laid off much of its public relations team, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under Musk, Twitter cut most of its staff, suffered frequent service outages and made a series of controversial changes to its policies and features, including the recent decision to remove blue checks for non-paying VIP users. to be verified.

Dorsey’s comments, which are described in posts Bluesky and reviewed, highlight the Twitter founder’s growing disillusionment with Musk. They also come after numerous trades in recent months in which Dorsey publicly questioned Some of the billionaire’s decisions.

A year ago, Dorsey was quick to praise Musk. When his deal to buy Twitter was first announced, Dorsey said that as long as the social network had to be owned by a single person or company, “Elon is the only solution I trust.”

“I am confident in your mission to spread the light of consciousness”, proclaimed Dorsey then.

Dorsey also transferred his more than 18 million shares of Twitter (a roughly 2.4% stake) to the new Musk-owned company as an equity investor, rather than receive a cash payment, according to a securities filing afterward. for the deal to be closed.

Now, however, Dorsey seems to believe that Musk was an imperfect choice. Facing criticism from other Bluesky users that Twitter could have gone in a different direction, Dorsey argued that there was nothing stopping someone else from outbidding Musk.

“If Elon or someone else wanted to buy the company, all he had to do was put a price that the board felt was better than what the company could do independently,” he said. “This is true for all public companies.”

Asked if he felt any responsibility for his role in the transaction, Dorsey, who was serving on Twitter’s board at the time, said he was not the only person who authorized the deal and that Twitter’s “only alternative” to Musk was a takeover by “hedge funds and Wall Street activists.”

“The company would never have survived as a public company,” Dorsey said, adding, “I wish it was different,” but that some of Twitter’s revenue initiatives before the Musk acquisition “wouldn’t have mattered given the turn of the market.”