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Musk "might not be" the best person to run Twitter claims founder

by on27 January 2023


No, really?

Elon [look at me] Musk is not the right person to be the supreme twit at the social networking company Twitter, according to its co-founder.

In an interview with the Guardian, Biz Stone said that improvements to morale and content policies at the business have been reversed under its new proprietor.

Stone, who co-founded Twitter in 2006 with Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass and Evan Williams, returned to the business in 2017 at the behest of thenchief executive Dorsey to “guide the company culture, that energy, that feeling”. Stone said improvements during his four-year stint, particularly in morale and overseeing content, have been lost under Musk.

Stone said running social media companies was a poison chalice at the best of times because half of users are going to be happy and the other half upset.

Musk, who is considered as a business genius in America in much the same way as Donald Trump was, has broken the world record for the largest loss of personal fortune in history, according to a Guinness World Records report.

Stone said Twitter managers have to be OK with stuff that they don’t like or don’t agree with being on there. Otherwise, they should just go buy a magazine or a newspaper or something where it’s OK to have a specific leaning.

Asked if Musk was the right owner for Twitter, Stone said: “It doesn’t seem like it right now, but I could be wrong.”

Musk has come under fire for temporarily banning journalists from the platform and reinstating previously banned accounts such as those belonging to the former US president Donald Trump and the self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate.

Stone added that employees should not have been named as part of the release of the so-called Twitter files, a series of internal documents detailing decisions such as the suspension of Donald Trump.

“When that happens, people get a lot of harassment,” said Stone. “It’s really bad.” Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, was reportedly forced to leave his home when Musk posted tweets misrepresenting Roth’s 2016 academic thesis, “Gay Data”.

 

Last modified on 27 January 2023
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