After co-founding one of the largest businesses in the world with Twitter in 2006, Jack Dorsey announced in a Tweet this Monday that he will be stepping down as the CEO of the social media company. Replacing him is Indian-American software engineer Parag Agrawal, 37, who’s been Twitter’s chief of technology officer since 2017, after joining the company in 2011.
One of Dorsey’s reasons for leaving the company was described by him as his desire to make Twitter a company that can prosper free of its founders.
Jack Dorsey/Twitter
“I believe it’s critical a company can stand on its own, free of its founder’s influence or direction.”
This decision comes in at a turbulent time not only for Twitter but for social media in general. with the January 6th Capitol Attacks that earned President Trump a deeply controversial ban from Twitter, and last month’s name change of Facebook to Meta amidst an ethical storm-out towards the company.
Dorsey helped co-found Twitter in 2006, but was fired from a top position in 2008, then came back in 2015 and since then has helped make Twitter the giant that it is today. However, his journey with the company has been filled with disputes and pressures. From early days with Twitter, Mr. Dorsey was viewed as unprofessional at times by his coworkers, which culminated in the 2008 firing. After that, Twitter has been involved in multiple controversies, some exacerbated by the pandemic, such as the misinformation concerns with the platform, and others that have been issues for quite some time, such as account limitations that test freedom of speech, and posts that are made with no consent.
Dorsey is also the CEO of payments company Square, which he founded in 2009 and today has a market cap of over $95billion dollars. Being the CEO of a payments company, and a billionaire that’s known for trying new technologies, Dorsey’s most recent works with Twitter revolved around cryptocurrency, as he and Parag Agrawal have laid the groundwork for Twitter to develop side by side with NFT’s and the quickly evolving digital economy.
Dorsey has testified before the U.S Congress and Senate to discuss censorship on Twitter, and the controversial decision of the company to permanently ban former U.S president Donald Trump from the platform, after two of his tweets during the January 6th insurrection violated the company’s policy of glorification of violence.
However, choosing to remove Trump’s account was a decision taken by one of the company’s lieutenants, as Dorsey reportedly was on vacation while calling into meetings from a private island in the South Pacific when Trump’s account was banned. This added to the public criticism of Dorsey’s lack of involvement with the company.
Twitter has already announced changes on its platform since the resignation of Dorsey. Now they will be officially removing images that were tweeted with no consent. This is the first big move by the company with Agrawal as the CEO, and it comes with a lot of criticism, especially from content creators that record in public spaces. But Dorsey has said his trust on Parag is “bone-deep”.
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