Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, retracted his earlier support for Elon Musk as the ideal candidate to run the company on Saturday, criticizing the billionaire for guiding Twitter through a string of largely self-inflicted problems over the past six months.
When asked on Bluesky, Dorsey’s new Twitter-like social networking platform, if Musk had been the greatest potential Twitter steward, Dorsey said categorically: “No.”
In addition, Dorsey said that Musk “should have walked away” from the $44 billion purchase of Twitter, and he blamed Twitter’s board for pressuring Musk to complete the transaction despite Musk’s previous attempts to back out of the agreement.
“It all went south,” Dorsey said. “But it happened and all we can do now is build something to avoid that ever happening again.”
An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by Twitter, which under Musk has significantly reduced its public relations personnel.
Under Musk, Twitter has reduced the majority of its workforce, experienced repeated service interruptions, and made several controversial changes to its services and policies, including the recent decision to remove blue checks from VIP users who don’t pay to be verified.
Dorsey’s observations, as described in Bluesky posts CNN analyzed, show the founder of Twitter becoming increasingly frustrated with Musk. They also follow several discussions in recent months in which Dorsey publicly questioned some of Musk’s decision making.
In the past year, Dorsey has been quick to laud Musk. When Musk’s agreement to buy Twitter was initially made public, Dorsey declared that, if Twitter had to be controlled by just one person or entity, “Elon is the singular solution I trust.”
“I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness,” Dorsey proclaimed at the time.
In addition, according to a securities filing made after the transaction was completed, Dorsey transferred his more than 18 million Twitter shares (about a 2.4% interest) into the new Musk-owned business as an equity investor rather than getting cash payment.
But as of late, Dorsey seems to think Musk was a poor choice. Other Bluesky users criticized Twitter’s decision, saying it could have taken a different turn. Dorsey responded that nothing prevented someone else from outbidding Musk.
“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,” he said. “This is true for every public company.”
When asked if he felt any guilt for his part in the sale, Dorsey, who was at the time a member of Twitter’s board, claimed that he wasn’t the only one who gave the go-ahead and that an acquisition by “hedge funds and Wall Street activists” was Twitter’s “only alternative” to Musk.
“The company would have never survived as a public company,” Dorsey claimed, adding: “I wish it were different,” but that some of Twitter’s revenue initiatives prior to Musk’s takeover “would not have mattered given market turn.”
