Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has expressed his disappointment at how Elon Musk’ is handling the micro-blogging platform since the takeover.
Jack made the remarks on his Twitter alternative platform Bluesky, in which he claimed that Musk should have walked away and paid the $1 billion, a termination fee if he or Twitter had backed out of the deal last year.
Jack wrote;
“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 $1 billion.”
Also, Jack criticized Musk’s introduction of the Blue Badge subscription policy which he said payment as proof of humans is a trap.
In his words, “Payment as a proof of human is a trap and I am not aligned with that at all. The payment systems being used for that proof exclude millions if not billions of people.”
Jack’s criticism of Musk’s leadership at Twitter comes after he had openly supported Musk in 2022 when he described him as the singular person he trusted to handle the company, also noting that had faith in him.
Jack tweeted in 2022, “In principle, I don’t believe anyone should run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving the problem of it being a company, however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness”.
A year ago, Dorsey was quick to heap praise on Musk. When Musk’s deal to purchase Twitter was first announced Dorsey said that so long as Twitter had to be owned by a single person or company, “Elon is the singular solution I trust.”
“I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness,” Dorsey proclaimed at the time.
Dorsey also rolled over his more than 18 million shares in Twitter (a roughly 2.4% stake) into the new Musk-owned company as an equity investor, rather than receiving a cash payout, according to a securities filing after the deal was completed.
Now, though, Dorsey appears to believe Musk was an imperfect choice. Confronted by 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 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.”
Asked whether he felt any responsibility for the role he played in the transaction, Dorsey, who served 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 an acquisition by “hedge funds and Wall Street activists.”
“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.”