Former CEO of Twitter and new founder of Bluesky, Jack Dorsey, said Elon Musk should not have bought Twitter the time he did. Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, said Musk should have paid a breakup fee of $1 billion instead of purchasing Twitter for $44 billion. He made it clear that the tech billionaire is not the best owner for the social media site as things are now, CNBC reports.
New users on Bluesky asked Dorsey if, in retrospect, he still believed that Musk should have been the best entrepreneur to acquire Twitter. With the launch of Bluesky and the woes bedeviling Twitter at the moment, many people think the former is the best alternative for the former. Dorsey made it clear that Musk’s timing for buying the platform was wrong.
“No. Nor do I think he acted right after realizing his timing was bad,” Dorsey stated flatly. “Nor do I think the board should have forced the sale. It all went south. I think he should have walked away and paid the $1 billion.
“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.”
Although Dorsey disclosed in April 2022 that Musk would be the best owner of Twitter, it seems he changed his narrative because of the lackluster way the billionaire is managing the platform. Dorsey earlier endorsed Musk as the best candidate to take over Twitter, saying he was the “singular solution I trust…with a mission to extend the light of consciousness” through Twitter with a view to making the platform “maximally trusted and broadly inclusive.”
After acquiring Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, Musk implemented a series of policies that make the platform unpopular among many individuals and business corporations.
Thousands of employees were retrenched, users were asked to make a monthly payment for the blue verification check mark, protections against hate speech were rolled back, many media outlets were labeled as government-funded, and publishers may begin to charge payment to people reading their articles starting next month.
This development caused hundreds of advertisers to abandon Twitter, with hordes of celebrities and politicians exiting the platform in droves. Dorsey is still a major shareholder in Twitter but is currently positioning Bluesky as a Twitter rival. It is currently operating on an invite-only basis.