Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has addressed the release of the so-called “Twitter files” published via the new owner of the social media platform, Elon Musk, stating that he believes there was “no ill intent or hidden agendas” under his leadership.
While Dorsey stopped short of directly addressing any of the specific revelations that were revealed by independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, he did provide his own take on their release.
Dorsey said he believes, based on his experience at Twitter’s helm, that social media must “be resilient to corporate and government control,” adding that only the original author of any content on the platform should be allowed to remove content they post, and that account suspensions should not be allowed to happen.
‘My Fault Alone’
“Moderation is best implemented by algorithmic choice,” he added. “The Twitter when I led it and the Twitter of today do not meet any of these principles,” Dorsey noted, adding that this is “my fault alone.”The former CEO also stated that the “biggest mistake” he made while at the company was to invest in building tools that allowed Twitter to manage the public conversation, as opposed to tools that allowed the people using Twitter to manage it themselves.
This, he said, “burdened the company with too much power, and opened us to significant outside pressure (such as advertising budgets).”
A week prior, Taibbi detailed how Twitter staff had worked to suppress a New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election.
Dorsey in his blog post noted that companies have “become far too powerful,” something he said became clear to him after Twitter’s suspension of former President Donald Trump’s account in 2021.
‘No Ill Intent or Hidden Agendas’
Musk has reinstated Trump’s account since taking over the company in October.“As I’ve said before, we did the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society,” Dorsey wrote. “I continue to believe there was no ill intent or hidden agendas, and everyone acted according to the best information we had at the time. Of course, mistakes were made.”
Elsewhere, Dorsey, who stepped down as Twitter CEO in November 2021, went on to state that governments seek to control and shape the public conversation and will use “every method at their disposal” to do so, which Dorsey said includes the media.
“The power a corporation wields to do the same is only growing,” he noted. “It’s critical that the people have tools to resist this, and that those tools are ultimately owned by the people. Allowing a government or a few corporations to own the public conversation is a path toward centralized control.”
Dorsey signed off the post by calling for Twitter to become “uncomfortably transparent in all their actions,” in both the present and the future, while noting that he had hoped the so-called Twitter Files were “released Wikileaks-style.”
“There’s nothing to hide … only a lot to learn from,” Dorsey wrote while expressing concern regarding “attacks” on his former colleagues.
“If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof,” the former Twitter CEO wrote.
Earlier this week, Dorsey denied claims by Musk that Twitter had refused to take action on child exploitation for years, stating on Twitter that this was simply “false.”
