Dorsey: Twitter Mistakes Were 'My Fault Alone'

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is pushing back—relatively gently—against some of the decisions Elon Musk has made at Twitter, while acknowledging he made mistakes of his own. In a blog post, Dorsey, who stepped down as CEO just over a year ago, set out the principles he now believes in for social media, including that it must be "resilient to corporate and government control" and "moderation is best implemented by algorithmic choice," Rolling Stone reports. "The Twitter when I led it and the Twitter of today do not meet any of these principles," Dorsey said. "This is my fault alone, as I completely gave up pushing for them when an activist entered our stock in 2020," he added. "I planned my exit at that moment knowing I was no longer right for the company."

Dorsey addressed the "Twitter Files"—summaries of internal Twitter communications compiled by journalists including Matt Taibbi. "I wish they were released Wikileaks-style, with many more eyes and interpretations to consider," Dorsey said, praising the virtues of "absolute transparency." Contrary to conservative journalists' take on the files, there "was no ill intent or hidden agendas, and everyone acted according to the best information we had at the time," Dorsey said, adding: "There's nothing to hide…only a lot to learn from. The current attacks on my former colleagues could be dangerous and doesn’t [sic] solve anything. If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof." On one episode covered in the files, the suspension of Donald Trump, Dorsey said: "We did the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society."

"The problem today is that we have companies who own both the protocol and discovery of content," Dorsey wrote. "Which ultimately puts one person in charge of what’s available and seen, or not. This is by definition a single point of failure, no matter how great the person, and over time will fracture the public conversation, and may lead to more control by governments and corporations around the world." TechCrunch reports that Dorsey, "putting his money where his mouth is," announced that he is going to start making grants to teams working on "open internet development," starting with a $1 million per year grant to the Signal encrypted instant messaging service. He said other "free and open social media" projects include Mastodon and his own project, Bluesky. (More Twitter stories.)