Jack Dorsey thinks Elon Musk isn’t doing it right with Twitter

Image credits: Jim Watson / Contributor / Getty Images

Jack Dorsey has been using Bluesky, the app he funded in part and built on a federal and open social networking protocol he advocates, to do some truth-telling about Twitter, Elon Musk, and the decision to take the company private under the supervision of a Tesla CEO. Dorsey acknowledges that Twitter has performed poorly under Musk — but he also blames the board for forcing the sale, and says Twitter had few options as a public company that would have ended well.

Dorsey responded to a question from Bluesky user Jason Goldman regarding whether he felt Musk proved to be “the best stew possible.” [sic](It’s okay Jason, we all make misspellings and we know you mean host) with the following:

no. And I don’t think he acted immediately after realizing his timing was bad.
And I don’t think the board should have forced the sale. Everything went south. But it did and all we can do now is build something to prevent it from happening again. So I’m glad Jay and his team and the nostr developers are out there and building it.

Then Washington Post writer Will Orems quoted this post and tried to frame it as Dorsey avoiding blaming himself, to which Dorsey vehemently objected, noting that he had previously apologized for his role in the fate of Twitter a lot.

In addition to lamenting the state of Twitter under Musk and the circumstances that led to it, Dorsey also shared his view that Twitter “will never survive as a public company,” suggesting that market conditions combined with the state of the company at the time meant it was destined for manipulation by Activist investors and private investment firms seeking control. Dorsey also paraphrased his infamous tweet claiming that “Elon is the only solution I trust,” explaining that he meant specifically as a result of taking Twitter private (presumably versus other active hedge fund investors).

Dorsey also contested the accusation that he “sold” the sale of the company to Musk, a scandalous accusation to be sure, but in particular, as Dorsey pointed out, public companies are by their very nature subject to buy-and-take with right (or wrongly, I think, depending on where You sit in it) market conditions.