Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Slams Elon Musk’s Handling of the App – New York Daily News

“It all went south” says Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, when Elon Musk bought the social media company, saying Musk’s timing was bad and he should have backed out of the deal.

On Friday, Dorsey was quizzed by users on his new app, Bluesky, about whether he still thinks Musk is the ideal owner of Twitter. Business Insider reported that Dorsey issued an emphatic denial.

“No. And I don’t think he acted right after realizing his timing was bad,” Dorsey wrote.

When the $44 billion deal looked set to fall apart, Twitter’s board of directors threatened to sue Musk for forcing the deal. Dorsey said the board’s effort to force the sale was also a bad idea.

“It all went south,” Dorsey wrote.

He continued, “If Elon or anyone wanted to buy the company, all they had to do was set a price that the board of directors felt was better than what the company could do independently.”

This is true of every public company. Was I optimistic? Yes. Did I have the final say? No. I think it is [Musk] They should have walked away and paid the billion dollars.”

Under his initial agreement to buy Twitter, Musk could have pulled out if he had paid a $1 billion breakup fee.

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Since acquiring Twitter last October, Musk has come under fire for a variety of new policies.

In addition to sweeping layoffs, Musk also began requiring people to pay for blue check marks, rolled back protections against hate speech, and, until recently, began labeling some media outlets as “government-funded.”

That latest decision was reversed after an international coalition of broadcasters published an open letter calling for Twitter to correct the “misleading label” it applied to four foreign news organizations.

These changes likely also contributed to Dorsey’s nervousness in the Tesla owner’s feelings.

His comments were a reversal from last year, when Dorsey called him “the only solution I trust” to make Twitter private. He added at the time that Musk’s plan to make Twitter “maximally reliable and inclusive at scale” was “right.”

Dorsey’s new site, Bluesky, is positioning itself as a competitor to Twitter.

The platform has been generating buzz in recent weeks, as an exclusive alternative to the Musk-led forum. It’s been trending on Twitter this past week, and boasts of some of its go-to big names like New York actor Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and model Chrissy Teigen.