Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said “it all went south” when Elon Musk bought the social media company, saying Musk’s timing was poor and he should have backed out of the deal.
Dorsey was asked Friday by users of his new upstart app “Bluesky” if he still believes Musk is the ideal owner for Twitter. Business Insider reported that Dorsey issued a flat denial.
“No. I also don’t think he acted immediately after realizing his timing was bad,” Dorsey wrote.
When the $44 billion deal appeared to fall through, Twitter’s board threatened to sue Musk to force the deal. Dorsey said the board’s effort to force the sale was also a bad idea.
“Everything goes south,” Dorsey wrote.
“If Elon or anyone else 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 continued.
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“This is true for every public company. Am I optimistic? Yes. Do I have final say? No. I think he [Musk] should have gone and paid the $1b.”
Under his initial agreement to buy Twitter, Musk could walk away if he paid a $1 billion break-up fee.
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Since acquiring Twitter last October, Musk has drawn heavy criticism for various new policies.
In addition to initiating mass deletions, Musk also began requiring people to pay for blue verification check marks, rolled back protections against hate speech, and until recently, began to -label some media outlets as “government funded.”
That last decision was overturned after an international alliance of broadcasters published an open letter calling on Twitter to correct the “misleading label” it applied to four foreign news organizations.
It’s possible that these changes may have also contributed to Dorsey’s sour feelings toward Tesla’s owner.
His comments were a reversal from last year, when Dorsey called him “the only solution I believe in” to make Twitter private. He added at the time that Musk’s plan to make Twitter “the most trusted and widely shared” was the “right one.”
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 invite-only alternative to the Musk-led forum. It’s been trending on Twitter for the past week, and boasts some big name converts like New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and model Chrissy Teigen.
