Jack Dorsey blames self for Twitter challenges

The former boss of the microblogging site, Twitter, Jack Dorsey, has taken responsibility for the challenges facing the platform.

In a blog post he shared via his Twitter handle on Tuesday, he took the blame for not preserving free speech on the platform and addressed the fallouts of the Twitter Files released by the company’s new owner, Elon Musk. The files are internal Twitter files from before his takeover.

He said, There’s a lot of conversation around the #TwitterFiles. Here’s my take, and thoughts on how to fix the issues identified. I’ll start with the principles I’ve come to believe…based on everything I’ve learned and experienced through my past actions as a Twitter co-founder and lead: 1. Social media must be resilient to corporate and government control 2. Only the original author may remove content they produce. 3. Moderation is best implemented by algorithmic choice.

“The Twitter when I led it and the Twitter of today do not meet any of these principles. This is my fault alone, as I completely gave up pushing for them when an activist entered our stock in 2020. I no longer had hope of achieving any of it as a public company with no defence mechanisms (lack of dual-class shares being a key one). I planned my exit at that moment knowing I was no longer right for the company.

“The biggest mistake I made was continuing to invest in building tools for us to manage the public conversation, versus building tools for the people using Twitter to easily manage it for themselves. This burdened the company with too much power, and opened us to significant outside pressure (such as advertising budgets). I generally think companies have become far too powerful.”