Jack Dorsey vs Elon Musk: Former CEO isn’t happy with the changes made to key feature

The world has seen Elon Musk’s antics on Twitter including his public spats with key personalities, tweets that sway crypto and stock prices, as well as false claims that got him and Tesla in trouble. But to Jack Dorsey, Musk was a model for how to use Twitter, as far back as 2016, which can be seen as the start of a much talked about friendship. The strength of their bond was revealed to the world when Musk took over Twitter a year after Dorsey was ousted as CEO, and had also said that the latter has a good heart, after his exit.

More than a friendly disagreement?

The duo usually seen praising each other on social media were recently seen questioning each other, when Dorsey tweeted his disapproval for Twitter’s new feature being called Community Notes. The founder wrote that Birdwatch was a far better name for the misinformation flagging tool, while Musk replied that the name suggested by Dorsey gave him the creeps. On one hand Dorsey felt that Community Notes was the most boring Facebook name, but on the other hand Musk doesn’t want everything on Twitter to include the word ‘bird’.

Dorsey upset about other things too

It all started less than two days after Dorsey publicly apologised to Twitter employees laid off by Musk. He questioned Musk’s tweet about making Twitter an accurate source of information, by asking accurate for who? To this Musk responded by saying that the need was expressed by people of Twitter via Community Notes, and that led to an exchange.

Take a look at Birdwatch

Community Notes is a mechanism, which allows people to collaborate and add notes on tweets which they feel are misleading users. Contributors can write what they feel about the content in a tweet and rate other notes from their point of view. The feature was initially called Birdwatch, but has been remanded to Community Notes under Musk’s leadership.

In his cryptic style, Musk also added that there are too many bird groups are fighting on Twitter, and also labelled them angry birds, which might be a jibe at Twitter spats or could hint at infighting.

Published on: Monday, November 07, 2022, 01:59 PM IST