Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey Private Text Messages Expose Reasoning Behind Twitter Takeover
In the weeks leading up to Elon Musk’s announcement to purchase Twitter, the billionaire CEO was bombarded with text messages from business leaders, media personalities, and celebrities, a new court filing revealed (pdf).
The text messages provided insight into the many private conversations involving Musk and other prominent individuals during his quest to purchase the social media giant. From seeking advice on what to do to improve the website to potentially obtaining financial assistance for his takeover bid, the exchanges showcased the excitement and frenzy leading up to where Musk and Twitter are today.
What were some of the more interesting conversations within the slew of Musk’s text messages?
On Mar. 24, Musk asked his millions of followers if “Twitter algorithm should be open source.” The Twitter poll received 82.7 percent of votes in favor of altering the algorithm.
Jack Dorsey, the Twitter co-founder and former CEO, responded to the tweet through text, purporting that “a new platform is needed.” Musk then inquired about what the social network should look like.
“I believe it must be an open source protocol, funded by a foundation of sorts that doesn’t own the protocol, only advances it. A bit like what Signal has done. It can’t have an advertising model. Otherwise you have surface area that governments and advertisers will try to influence and control. If it has a centralized entity behind it, it will be attacked,” Dorsey replied. “This isn’t complicated work, it just has to be done right so it’s resilient to what has happened to twitter [sic].”
He added that turning Twitter into a corporation was its “original sin.”
Two days later, Dorsey told Musk the board of directors was uninterested in giving him a seat, telling him that “the board is just super risk averse and saw adding you as more risk.” Of course, one week later, Musk announced his intentions to join the board, although he later changed his mind and decided to acquire the business for $44 billion.
Dorsey also noted that the board’s approach to Musk “was completely stupid and backwards,” adding that he could not do much since he only possessed one vote, owned 3 percent of the firm, and did not have any dual-class shares.
Parag Agrawal
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal got in touch with Musk in an April 3 text, congratulating him for joining Twitter’s board. He stated that he was “super excited about the opportunity” to work together and that he was looking “forward to working closely and finding ways to use your time as effectively as possible.”
Agrawal requested that Musk treat him like an engineer instead of a chief executive as he used to be the chief technical officer and spent a long time in Twitter’s codebase.
But the text messages quickly turned sour following an April 9 Twitter post where Musk asked, “Is Twitter dying?”
Agrawal reached out to Musk, informing him that he is “free to tweet ‘is Twitter dying?’ or anything about Twitter.
“But it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not helping me make Twitter better in the current context,” Agrawal wrote. “I’d like the company to get to a place where we are more resilient and don’t get distracted, but we aren’t there right now.”
“What did you get done this week?” Musk responded.
“I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time,” he added.
A few days later, Musk contacted Agrawal and confirmed that he would “make an offer to take Twitter private.”
Mathias Dopfner
The CEO of German digital publishing house Axel Springer, Mathias Dopfner, urged Musk to buy Twitter and let his firm manage the website.
“We run it for you. And establish a true platform of free speech. Would be a real contribution to democracy,” he said.
Musk called it an “interesting idea,” to which Dopfner responded that he was “serious” and it was “doable.”
“Will be fun,” Dopfner texted.
Dopfner followed up on his proposal on Apr. 6, offering a more detailed plan for the social media outlet. He agreed that “it is the de facto public town square” and that it would be “the global backbone of free speech.” Dopfner suggested making Twitter “censorship-FREE by radically reducing Terms of Services” to just three things: prohibited from sending spam or scamming users, promoting violence, or posting illegal pornography.
The next step, according to Dopfner, is to “Make Twitter censorship-RESISTANT.”
“Ensure censorship resistance by implementing measures that warrant that Twitter can’t be censored long term, regardless of which government and management,” he wrote.
“How? Keep pushing projects at Twitter that have been working on developing a decentralized social network protocol (e.g., BlueSky) It’s not easy but the backend must run on decentralized infrastructure, APIs should become open (back to the roots! Twitter started and became big with open APIs).”
According to Dopfner, this would manufacture a marketplace for algorithms, so “if you’re a snowflake and don’t want content that offends you pick another algorithm.”
After his discussion of a “Solve Share Price” strategy, the messages were cut off in the documents without any noted response from Musk.
Larry Ellison
Musk reached out to Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle and former Tesla board member, on Apr. 20. He inquired if Ellison had “any interest in participating in the Twitter deal.” He responded that he would be interested.
“Roughly what dollar size? Not holding you to anything, but the deal is oversubscribed, so I have to reduce or kick out some participants,” Musk said.
Ellison answered with “a billion … or whatever you recommend.”
“Whatever works for you. I’d recommend maybe $2B or more,” Musk noted. “This has very high potential and I’d rather have you than anyone else.”
“I agree that it has huge potential … and it would be a lot of fun,” Ellison responded.
Joe Rogan, Gayle King, and Justin Roiland
Musk has appeared a couple of times on podcaster Joe Rogan’s show. On Apr. 4, Rogan sent a text asking if Musk was “going to liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob?” The Tesla Motors CEO replied that “I will provide advice, which they may or may not choose to follow.”
CBS anchor Gayle King asked if he would sit down for an interview to talk about the deal.
“Have you missed me,” she wrote in an April 6 message. “Are you ready to do a proper sit down with me? so much to discuss! Especially with your Twitter play … what do I need to do???”
Musk dismissed the entire situation as “getting blown out of proportion,” later adding that a “Twitter edit button is coming.”
One week later, she made another request for a one-on-one interview.
“ELON! You buying Twitter or offering to buy Twitter,” she texted. “Wow! Now don’t you think we should sit down together face to face? This is, as the kids of today say, a ‘gangsta move.’”
Justin Roiland, the co-creator of the hit television series “Rick and Morty,” recommended Musk use his friends’ technology to verify users’ real identities and confirm that they are “not a troll farm.” This would have been relevant since Musk’s reasoning behind abandoning his acquisition is that he thinks the number of fake and spam accounts is much higher than what Twitter is officially reporting.
Developments in the Twitter-Musk Saga
Twitter and Musk will now settle the corporate dispute in court. The tech firm will try to force Musk to complete his acquisition of Twitter, while he attempts to end the takeover bid. Musk had failed to get the trial delayed until early next year. Instead, the two sides are scheduled to appear at a Delaware Chancery Court on Oct. 17.
This comes weeks after Twitter shareholders voted to approve Musk’s proposal to buy the business for $44 billion. The Twitter stock posted a September gain of 13.52 percent, rising to $43.84 shares. Year-to-date, the company is up 2.77 percent.
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Andrew Moran covers business, economics, and finance. He has been a writer and reporter for more than a decade in Toronto, with bylines on Liberty Nation, Digital Journal, and Career Addict. He is also the author of “The War on Cash.”
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