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Jack Dorsey will reportedly leave Twitter’s board of directors today – 16 years after co-founding the firm.
He is expected to stand down ahead of the $44billion takeover by Tesla magnate Elon Musk.
It comes after the entrepreneur was accused of stabbing the rest of the board in the back by helping the world’s richest man acquire Twitter.
One of his former colleagues slammed him for ‘clear backstabbing’ when he and the billionaire ‘had a deal in hand to come to a standstill’.
Meanwhile billionaire Peter Thiel is also expected to leave Facebook despite being an early investor in the company.
The CEO is expected to stand down ahead of the $44billion takeover by Tesla magnate Elon Musk
Dorsey was set to leave Twitter on Wednesday, according to business news website The Street.
The CEO and co-founded had not commented on the claims and the news firm was yet to go into further detail.
Earlier this month the entrepreneur said he agreed with Musk’s decision to reverse a ban on Donald Trump on the platform.
Musk, who is in the process of completing his $44billion acquisition, revealed he intended to revoke the ban, calling it ‘a morally bad decision and foolish in the extreme’.
Trump was banned from Twitter in January 2021, in response to his supporters storming the US Capitol and attempting to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
Speaking at a London conference on the future of cars, Musk said: ‘I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump.’
The Tesla founder said Dorsey, who was CEO until November 2021, agreed with him. ‘I do agree,’ Dorsey tweeted, pointing out he did not generally support bans.
‘There are exceptions (CSE, illegal behaviour, spam or network manipulation, etc), but generally permanent bans are a failure of ours and don’t work, which I wrote about here after the event (and called for a resilient social media protocol).’
Dorsey then linked to his January 13, 2021, tweet in which he defended the decision.
‘I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realdonaldtrump from Twitter, or how we got here,’ Dorsey said at the time.
‘After a clear warning we’d take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter.
‘I believe this was the right decision for Twitter. We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety. Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all.’
Dorsey added, in his lengthy thread, a caveat that the decision would need reevaluating.
‘This moment in time might call for this dynamic, but over the long term it will be destructive to the noble purpose and ideals of the open internet.
‘A company making a business decision to moderate itself is different from a government removing access, yet can feel much the same,’ he said.
Quizzed about his views by Axios’s business editor Dan Primack, Dorsey said that he now regretted the call.
‘It was a business decision, it shouldn’t have been,’ he said.
‘And we should always revisit our decisions and evolve as necessary. I stated in that thread and still believe that permanent bans of individuals are directionally wrong.’
Trump, who launched his own competing service dubbed Truth Social, previously claimed he would not return to Twitter even if he was invited back.
Appearing virtually at the FT Future of the Car conference, Musk called Twitter’s ban of Trump a ‘mistake’.
‘It alienated a large part of the country, and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice,’ Musk said. ‘He is now going to be on Truth Social.
‘So I think this may end up being frankly worse than having a single forum where everyone can debate. I guess the answer is that I would reverse the permanent ban.’
Musk said he had discussed the subject of permanent bans, or ‘permabans’, with Dorsey.
‘He and I are of the same mind, which is that permanent bans should be extremely rare, and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or spam/scam accounts,’ said Musk.
Trump was banned from Twitter in January of 2021, in response to his supporters storming the US Capitol
‘I would reverse the permaban [of Trump],’ he said, adding: ‘Obviously I don’t own Twitter yet, so this is not something that will definitely happen.’
‘But my opinion, and I want to be clear that Jack Dorsey shares this opinion, is that we should not have permabans,’ said Musk.
In his remarks on Tuesday, Musk also said that his acquisition of Twitter, which is still subject to a shareholder approval, could close well before the October deadline.
‘Just objectively it is not a done deal,’ he said. ‘The best case scenario is that it would perhaps be done in two or three months.’
Trump launched his Truth Social app in February, but the service’s debut was plagued by technical issues.
Musk previously mocked the Twitter clone, calling Truth Social a ‘terrible name’ and joking that it should be called Trumpet instead. He has said that Truth Social only exists because Twitter ‘censored free speech’.
Trump said that he had no intention of rejoining Twitter even if his account was reinstated, telling Fox News last month that he would instead focus on Truth Social.
‘I am not going on Twitter. I am going to stay on Truth,’ Trump told the network.
‘I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth.’
Trump was originally banned from Twitter for allegedly inciting violence with his unsupported claims that the election had been stolen.
Twitter said at the time that after a review of how Trump’s tweets ‘are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter’ that it had banned his account ‘due to the risk of further incitement of violence.’
The ban was handed down on January 8, 2021, two days after Trump loyalists attacked the US Capitol.
His final tweet read: ‘To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.’
Twitter said in a statement at the time they interpreted this remark as a potential call to violence, by further calling into question the legitimacy of the election and signaling to supporters that the inauguration would be a ‘safe’ target for violence.
