Twitter: Jack Dorsey vs Elon Musk

Jack Dorsey is the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, currently led by the histrionic Elon Musk.

He stepped down as CEO of Twitter about a year ago after having been CEO for more than a decade. 

Meanwhile, Elon Musk is the new owner of Twitter, and for now he also runs the company as CEO. 

Over the years the two have shown fairly similar ideas about Twitter, but since Musk began to turn the company upside down Dorsey has not failed to criticize him. 

Twitter, Dorsey’s criticism of Elon Musk

One of the hottest issues at present are the so-called “Twitter Files,” or internal documents that Musk says would show that Twitter in recent years has not been impartial in moderating content, particularly political content. 

A few days ago, the first Twitter File was released showing how during the past 2020 US presidential election several tweets regarding allegations made against the son of Democratic candidate Joe Biden were censored. 

Musk had promised the release of more Twitter Files, but for now he has already delayed a couple of times. 

Yesterday Dorsey commented on these continued postponements saying that if the goal of this initiative was really to build trust through greater transparency, then Twitter should release everything unfiltered, then let people make their own judgments. 

In fact, he accused Musk of having ulterior motives, as it seems clear that Twitter is not just publishing what it finds. 

To Dorsey’s criticism Musk responded by saying that the most relevant information has been hidden over time even from Dorsey himself, so much so that some may even have been deleted. He also promised that they will publish everything they find. 

To be fair, Musk’s response does not remove the doubts raised by Dorsey, not least because at this stage it is rather obvious to expect Musk to try to get as much talk about Twitter as possible in order to gain more attention for his platform. 

Cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies are also somehow involved in this whole thing. 

Not only because Elon Musk has been endorsing Dogecoin for some time now, and to some extent Bitcoin as well, but especially because Jack Dorsey has abandoned Twitter to focus on development on Lightning Network. 

Even though in the specific case of the Twitter Files cryptocurrencies seem unrelated, the back-and-forth between Dorsey and Musk in some ways resembles that of Bitcoin versus Dogecoin and all the altcoins that would like to besmirch it, replace it, or diminish its role. 

However, while Dorsey has already set to work on developments on Bitcoin, it does not appear that Elon Musk is involved in the development of Dogecoin yet. In fact, to be honest, it appears that there is no really major development on Dogecoin at present. 

In fact, after DOGE’s price went up from $0.072 on 22 November to $1.09 on 5 December, its price has fallen slightly in recent days to below $0.097. 

The current price is still 87% lower than the all-time high in May last year, when Musk participated on Saturday Night Live as the “Dogefather,” but if nothing else, the recent increases have brought it back above the late May price, that is, above the levels following the implosion of the Terra/Luna ecosystem. 

It is enough to scroll through Dorsey’s Twitter profile to realize that he is now really uninterested in the evolution of the social network he co-founded 16 years ago, and is instead very active in the crypto sector. 

Twitter Coin

Recently a rumor has circulated that Twitter is working on its own cryptocurrency, for now referred to by the fictitious name Twitter Coin. 

Little is known about this, but it is certain that Musk has halted the work of the internal team that until recently was working on possible integration with cryptocurrencies. 

However, Musk himself has repeatedly said that Twitter in the future will also allow it to be used as a payments app, along the lines of China’s WeChat, and that cryptocurrency payments will also be supported. 

However, it is not yet clear what role existing cryptocurrencies, and in particular Bitcoin, Dogecoin, but also Ethereum, may play in such a project. 

It is worth mentioning that Bitcoin offers, via Lightning Network, a decentralized and well-tested platform that even allows fast and extremely cheap micropayments, while Dogecoin does not seem to offer much. However, while Musk could have virtually no significant role on the development of the Bitcoin protocol, in theory he could have a role on Dogecoin. At that point, perhaps Twitter might actually agree to work on its own cryptocurrency. 

Twitter’s problems since Elon Musk management

The two main problems Twitter is facing right now are the outflow of advertisers, and the shortage of staff. 

In reality, it seems that the first are coming back because apparently two giants such as Apple and Amazon have returned to advertise on the social network. Thus it may be that this is a problem that is already being resolved. 

The second problem was generated by the huge amount of layoffs that Musk wanted, but right now it does not seem to be having the negative consequences that were feared it might generate. 

On the contrary, the platform continues to function well from a technical standpoint, even with some improvements in the face of a sharp increase in usage. 

On the other hand, it seems that such problems remain precisely with content and account moderation processes, as several violations have been detected that were not promptly detected. 

After all, the Twitter Files themselves merely bring to light a problem, concerning specifically content moderation, that is much deeper and more entrenched than was believed until a few weeks ago.