Twitter CEO steps down, leaves company at a crossroads

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, MICHELLE CHAPMAN and TALI ARBEL

Jack Dorsey is retired of his station arsenic Twitter’s main enforcement for the 2nd clip successful his vocation — this time, helium says, by choice.

Dorsey, who co-founded the company, offered nary circumstantial reasons for his resignation Monday beyond an abstract statement that Twitter, wherever he’s spent 16 years successful assorted roles, should “break distant from its founding and founders.” Dependence connected institution founders, helium wrote, is “severely limiting.”

He volition beryllium succeeded by Twitter’s existent main exertion officer, Parag Agrawal, a prime Wall Street analysts seemed to welcome, seeing him arsenic a harmless prime who volition usher the institution into what’s wide seen arsenic the internet’s adjacent epoch — the metaverse. Investors were little sure, sending Twitter’s banal 3% lower.

Dorsey was the societal platform’s archetypal CEO successful 2007 until helium was forced retired the pursuing year, past returned to the relation successful 2015. He is known for his relaxed demeanor, for his sometimes monolithic beard that’s the taxable of respective parody Twitter accounts and for Silicon Valley eccentricities that see dabbling successful soundless retreats, intermittent fasting, cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

He leaves Twitter astatine a crossroads. The work changed American politics, journalism and culture.

”But it also, it turns out, had a darker broadside and has been exploited for years by radical who privation to harass different radical and dispersed falsehoods astir different individuals, astir groups of individuals, astir the authorities of democracy,” said Paul Barrett, lawman manager astatine the New York University Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.

In a missive posted connected his Twitter account, Dorsey said helium was “really sad…yet truly happy” astir leaving the institution and that it was his decision.

Dorsey sent the archetypal tweet connected March 21, 2006, that work “just mounting up my twttr.” Twitter went done a play of robust maturation during its aboriginal years, but arsenic its enlargement slowed, the San Francisco institution began tweaking its format successful a bid to marque it easier and much engaging to use. While it ne'er rivaled Facebook successful size, Twitter became a superior conduit for governmental sermon and journalism, for amended and for worse.

He volition stay connected the committee until his word expires successful 2022. Agrawal joined Twitter successful 2011 and has been CTO since 2017. Dorsey expressed assurance successful Agrawal and caller committee Chairman Bret Taylor, who is president and main operating serviceman of the concern bundle institution Salesforce.

Twitter was caught up successful the heated governmental ambiance starring up to the 2020 election, peculiarly erstwhile it banned erstwhile President Donald Trump pursuing his incitement of the Jan. 6 riot astatine the U.S. Capitol. Dorsey defended the move, saying Trump’s tweets aft the lawsuit resulted successful a hazard to nationalist information and created an “extraordinary and untenable circumstance” for the company.

Trump sued the company, on with Facebook and YouTube, successful July, alleging censorship.

Critics argued that Twitter took excessively agelong to code hatred speech, harassment and different harmful enactment connected its platform, peculiarly during the statesmanlike campaign.

Publicly, Dorsey has signaled that helium understood Twitter’s request to change. In a bid of tweets successful 2018, helium said the institution was committed to “collective health, openness, and civility of nationalist conversation, and to clasp ourselves publically accountable towards progress.”

“We person witnessed abuse, harassment, troll armies, manipulation done bots and human-coordination, misinformation campaigns, and progressively divisive echo chambers. We aren’t arrogant of however radical person taken vantage of our service, oregon our inability to code it accelerated enough,” helium wrote.

The institution adopted much stringent content-moderation standards and different changes, Barrett said. “And that’s each to the good, but it’s not perfect, and it’s obscurity adjacent to perfect.”

Dorsey has faced respective distractions arsenic CEO, starting with the information that he’s besides laminitis and CEO of the payments institution Square. Some large investors person questioned whether helium could efficaciously pb some companies.

Since Twitter went nationalist successful 2013, its banal has been sluggish. It closed astatine $41 connected its archetypal time of trading 8 years ago. On Monday, it ended the time astatine $45.78. Square has enjoyed acold greater fiscal occurrence with Dorsey astatine the helm. Its stock, which began trading successful 2015 astir $13, closed Monday supra $212.

Last year, Twitter came to an statement with 2 of those activistic investors that kept Dorsey successful the apical occupation and gave a spot connected the institution committee to Elliott Management Corp., which owned astir 4% of Twitter’s stock, and different to the Silver Lake backstage equity firm.

Agrawal is simply a “‘safe’ prime who should beryllium looked upon arsenic favorably by investors,” wrote CFRA Research expert Angelo Zino, who noted that Elliott had pressured Dorsey to measurement down. Elliott released a connection Monday saying Agrawal and Taylor were the “right leaders for Twitter astatine this pivotal infinitesimal for the company.”

While Twitter has high-profile users similar politicians and celebrities and is simply a favourite of journalists, its idiosyncratic basal lags acold down aged rivals Facebook and YouTube and newer ones specified arsenic TikTok. It has conscionable implicit 200 cardinal regular progressive users, a communal manufacture metric.

Agrawal is acold little known than Dorsey. He antecedently worked astatine Microsoft, Yahoo and AT&T successful probe roles. At Twitter, he’s worked connected instrumentality learning, gross and user engineering and assemblage growth. An migrant from India, helium studied astatine Stanford University and the Indian Institute of Technology successful Bombay.

As CEO, helium volition person to measurement retired from his mostly method inheritance and face societal and governmental issues, including misinformation, maltreatment and effects connected intelligence health.

Agrawal got a accelerated instauration to beingness arsenic CEO of a institution that’s 1 of the cardinal platforms for governmental speech. Conservatives rapidly unearthed a tweet helium sent successful 2010 that work “If they are not gonna marque a favoritism betwixt muslims and extremists, past wherefore should I separate betwixt achromatic radical and racists.”

As immoderate Twitter users pointed out, the 11-year-old tweet quoted a conception connected “The Daily Show,” which was referencing the firing of writer Juan Williams, who made a remark astir being tense astir Muslims connected an airplane. Twitter did not instantly respond to a connection seeking remark connected the tweet.

Barrett said Dorsey’s founder-CEO peers — notably Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg — should instrumentality heed.

“It would beryllium omniscient for the founding procreation to really springiness up power connected a day-to-day ground of these entities sooner than they thin to do. I deliberation there’s a earthy inclination to privation to clasp connected to your babe and usher and signifier it,” helium said. “But it’s a precise antithetic relation coming up with the thought successful the archetypal spot and refining it successful its precise earliest years and past moving it erstwhile it becomes thing that has hundreds of millions of users.”