Elon Musk “doesn’t seem like” the right person to own Twitter, the social media platform’s co-founder said, adding that improvements in morale and content policies at the company have been reversed under its new ownership.
In an interview with The Guardian, Biz Stone said that the positive changes he had helped oversee in recent years had been undone by Tesla’s chief executive.
Stone said that running social media companies “isn’t really a win-win situation…it’s always hard” because “50% of the people will be happy, 50% of the people will be upset with you.”
“You have to be okay with the things that you just don’t like or you’re not okay with being there,” Stone said, adding: “Otherwise you should go buy a magazine or a newspaper or something that be fine. have a specific inclination.
When asked if Musk was the correct owner of Twitter, Stone said: “It doesn’t look like it right now, but I could be wrong.”
Musk has been criticized for temporarily banning journalists from the platform and reinstating previously banned accounts, including those of former US President Donald Trump and self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate.
Stone, who co-founded Twitter in 2006 with Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass and Evan Williams, returned to business in 2017 at the behest of then-CEO Dorsey to “drive the culture of the company, that energy, that sentiment.” Stone said the improvements during his four-year term, particularly in morale and content oversight, were lost under Musk.
“We made a lot of improvements in those areas. And all of that is gone now.”
Musk has backtracked on his commitment to establish a “content moderation board” that would have overseen big content decisions and account reinstatements, instead relying on more arbitrary methods such as user surveys hosted on his own account. Twitter. He also laid off around half of Twitter’s workforce within days of buying the business for $44bn (£35bn) last year.
Stone added that the employees should not have been named as part of the release of the so-called Twitter files, a series of internal documents detailing decisions such as the suspension of Donald Trump.
“When that happens, people get a lot of bullying,” Stone said. “It’s really bad.” Twitter’s former head of trust and security Yoel Roth was reportedly forced to leave his home when Musk posted tweets misrepresenting Roth’s 2016 academic thesis, “Gay Data.”
Stone said the Twitter concept would survive, regardless of the company’s current financial difficulties. “I don’t know if Twitter as a company is going to be successful forever, but I think the idea of Twitter will continue to be around,” Stone said, pointing to the success of alternative platforms like Mastodon.
“It would only matter that on Twitter the idea continued. And that has happened. That seems to be happening already. Mastodon seems to be gaining on the decentralized and open source version of Twitter. People seem to be going there.”
And he added: “I don’t know the future. I don’t know what’s going to happen and maybe things will be great in a year and [it] He had to go through this acid test. But, right now it’s not looking good, I would say.”
Stone spoke to The Guardian when he confirmed that he will join the board of chroma, a Swedish startup in which he is also an investor. Chroma creates an audiovisual experience for mobile phone users, describing itself as “a world of sound experiences in a pocket” where users can change what they see and hear.
Describing Chroma’s work as “sound play,” Stone added, “It’s a new way of interacting with sound and playing with sound.” Last year, Chroma collaborated with Venezuelan musician Arca to create Lux Aeterna, an app that creates an “unlimited and ever-evolving audiovisual world.”
Stone said his investment philosophy is simple: “Do I like this person” and “Do I think he can achieve this that I would use myself?” He adds: “If those two answers are yes, I’m usually in.”
Referring to Chroma CEO and founder Andreas Pihlström, he said: “I like working with Andreas. He is a really talented designer”. Stone’s co-investors in Chroma include Evan Sharp, co-founder of digital bulletin board platform Pinterest, and Ben Silbermann, co-founder and CEO of Pinterest, where Pihlström served as creative director.
Stone, who has also invested in the messaging service Slack and Pinterest, added that he never thought Twitter would be a success when he founded it in San Francisco.
“I tell young people: if you’re doing something to try to get rich, it probably won’t work. You should do something you really enjoy working on and then have a better chance of becoming rich.”
