Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey said company ‘went south’ after Elon Musk took over

May 15, 2023

Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey admitted “it all went south” for the social media behemoth when new owner Elon Musk purchased the site for an incredible $44 billion last year.

Dorsey sharply criticized Musk last week after he initially backed the billionaire to guide the site into the future a year ago.

When asked on his emerging social media site Bluesky Friday if Musk was the right man to lead the platform, Dorsey replied “no,” according to reports.

“Nor do I think he acted right after realizing his timing was bad,” Dorsey wrote, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Nor do I think the board should have forced the sale. It all went south.”

Bluesky is a competing alternative to Twitter funded by Dorsey and is currently invite-only.

One Bluesky user noted it was pretty sad how it all went down, with Dorsey agreeing.

However, he noted that Twitter “would have never survived as a public company.”

“Would you rather have had it owned by hedge funds and Wall Street activists? That was the only alternative,” Dorsey said, according to Bloomberg.

Elon Musk on October 26, 2022 shows himself carrying a sink as he enters the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. — Elon Musk on October 26, 2022 carrying a sink as he enters the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco.

Jack Dorsey creator, co-founder, and Chairman of Twitter and co-founder & CEO of Square, speaks during the crypto-currency conference Bitcoin 2021 Convention at the Mana Convention Center in Miami, Florida, on June 4, 2021. — Jack Dorsey creator and co-founder of Twitter, speaks during the crypto-currency conference Bitcoin 2021 Convention at the Mana Convention Center in Miami, Florida, on June 4, 2021.

Musk has made major and controversial changes at Twitter since he took over as CEO in October. He slashed more than half the staff and tweaked content moderation.

He also has pitched a Twitter subscription service where users can pay $8 per month to get a blue check mark.

Legacy check marks, previously reserved for high profile users on the site, were lost in April though some users claim they were given a blue check mark without paying for the subscription service.

Musk arrives on the red carpet for the Axel Springer Award 2020 on Dec. 1, 2020 in Berlin, Germany.

“Payment as proof of human is a trap and I’m not aligned with that at all,” Dorsey said on Bluesky, according to Bloomberg. “The payment systems being used for that proof exclude millions if not billions of people.”

Dorsey’s recent comments were a stark departure from his past opinion of Musk, who used to speak highly of.

In April 2022 he touted Musk and said he was the “singular solution I trust” for the company.

Musk, also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, originally said he wanted to buy Twitter to restore its free speech principles, but then tried to back out of the deal.

A legal battle ensued and the billionaire eventually agreed to the purchase.