Jack Dorsey reemerged on Elon Musk’s X recently, calling it a “freedom technology” last week as he stepped down from Bluesky’s board. In an interview with Pirate Wires Thursday, the founder of Twitter says he never really left the platform, he just was posting less. Dorsey also shed light on his departure from Bluesky, saying it became just “another app,” one he never intended to create.
“[Bluesky] is literally repeating all the mistakes we made as a company. This is not a protocol that’s truly decentralized. It’s another app,” Dorsey said in an interview with Pirate Wires Thursday. “Everything we wanted around decentralization, everything we wanted in terms of an open source protocol, suddenly became a company with VCs and a board. That’s not what I wanted, that’s not what I intended to help create.”
In a wide-ranging interview with Pirate Wires founder Mike Solana, Dorsey gave the impression that he aligns with Elon Musk’s direction for X, but not the vision for the platform from Bluesky CEO Jay Graber. Dorsey noted that he not only called X “freedom technology,” but also the social media platform Nostr, which he described as a “truly open protocol.” As Bluesky added moderation tools and started kicking people off the platform, Dorsey said it was no longer the open-source protocol he set out to create.
Bluesky did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
Meanwhile, Dorsey praised many of the changes Elon Musk has made to the X platform. He says Twitter was working on many of these changes before the company was sold, but they were just slow. Dorsey said deprioritizing advertisements, and focusing more on subscriptions, payments, and other revenue lines were exactly what he would do in Musk’s position. Dorsey even said he tried to get the new X boss involved with Twitter before the acquisition.
“I had tried to get Elon on the board for some time,” said Dorsey. “He obviously loves Twitter, and I’ve always loved how he used it, because he used it in a very pure form. And he would be extremely expressive on it.”
Dorsey’s criticisms of Bluesky’s content moderation policies are a stark contrast with what was going on at Twitter while Dorsey was in power. When asked about Twitter’s open lines of communication with the U.S. government revealed in the Twitter Files, Dorsey said “it was problematic.” However, Dorsey says that people at Twitter didn’t get enough credit for pushing back on government requests as much as they did.
As the founder of Twitter reemerges on X, he’s unfollowed almost every account except for Edward Snowden, Musk, Stella Assange, and Ali Alexander. He tells Pirate Wires that he wanted to experience what can only be described as a pure version of X’s algorithm.
“I’ve always wanted to start fresh, because I believe the algorithm can be good enough that you don’t really need the follow action,” said Dorsey.
And lastly, no interview with Dorsey is complete without talking crypto. He said the price of Bitcoin in 2030 will probably be “at least a million.” Dorsey says he thinks Bitcoin will hit at least that number, and go far beyond.
