Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder and former CEO, said Tuesday that banning Donald Trump from the platform was “a business decision,” but agreed with Elon Musk that the former president should get his Twitter access restored.
Hours after remarks by Musk, who is pursuing a deal to buy Twitter and make it a private company, Dorsey acknowledged that permanent bans are “a failure of ours.”
“It was a business decision, it shouldn’t have been. And we should always revisit our decisions and evolve as necessary,” Dorsey wrote.
“Permanent bans of individuals are directionally wrong,” he added, though he said exceptions are warranted in some situations.
Trump was permanently removed from the platform in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot “due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter wrote in a blog post announcing the decision.
Dorsey, still in charge of company at the time, defended the call as “the right decision for Twitter,” but also warned it set a “dangerous” precedent.
Dorsey’s comments came after Musk told a Financial Times event on Tuesday the ban on Trump was “morally wrong and flat out stupid.”
“I would reverse the permanent ban,” Musk said. “I don’t own Twitter yet. So this is not like a thing that will definitely happen, because what if I don’t own Twitter?”
Twitter’s board agreed to sell the company to Musk for $44 billion on April 25, days after the billionaire said he had secured enough funding. The sale has not been finalized and the agreement includes a $1 billion termination fee if either party walks away.
Meanwhile, Musk suffered a legal setback after a court said Tuesday his 2018 tweets alleging he had obtained the funds to take Tesla private were untrue, according to Reuters.
The judge said discussions then between Musk and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund were in the early stages and “there was nothing concrete about funding coming from” them.
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