Jack Dorsey is set to step down as CEO of Twitter 

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Republicans have already started to slam the new Twitter CEO after a 2010 tweet resurfaced in which he appears to call all white people racist and claimed last year that the company is ‘not bound by the First Amendment.’

Parag Agrawal was named the new CEO of the social media giant early on Monday, after serving as the company’s chief technology officer since 2017.

But in a tweet published on October 26, 2010,  Agrawal, 45, wrote: ‘If they are not gonna make a distinction between Muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists?’

The tweet was apparently quoting comedian Aasif Mandvi, who had appeared in an episode of The Daily Show in a segment pitting black people against Muslim people, playing on the irrational fear of the two minorities.  

The tweet resurfaced after he was named Jack Dorsey’s successor on Monday.

Mia Cathell, a news editor for the Post Millennial, joked that he apparently does not know how to scrub his tweets, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, wrote: ‘This is Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s new CEO and the person who’s going to be deciding what kind of speech is allowed on Twitter.’  

Agrawal has also previously faced controversy after he seemed to imply in a November 2020 interview that social media sites should regulate free speech. 

Technology Review editor-in-chief Gideon Lichfield had asked him how Twitter balances its efforts to combat misinformation with wanting to ‘protect free speech’ and respect the First Amendment.

In response, Agrawal said: ‘Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation and our moves are reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation.  

‘The kinds of things that we do about this is, focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.’

‘One of the changes today that we see is speech is easy on the internet’ he continued.

‘Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard. The scarce commodity today is attention. There’s a lot of content out there. A lot of tweets out there, not all of it gets attention, some subset of it gets attention.’  

In an email to company employees he posted to Twitter on Monday, Dorsey denied that he was being pushed out of the company’s leadership and claimed to be resigning so that the company can move on from its founders.

‘I’ve worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders,’ he wrote, noting that ‘there aren’t many founders that choose their company over ego.

‘I know we’ll prove this was the right move.’  

Dorsey, 45, was the CEO of the social media giant when it was first founded in 2006, and oversaw its startup. He returned to the top job in 2015.

He has since faced criticism from top Republican lawmakers for stifling free speech on Twitter and banning former President Donald Trump from the social media site. There have also been calls for tighter legislation on what can be posted on social media sites, with some claiming the site spreads misinformation.

And, there have been concerns about his time being divided between Twitter and payments company Square Inc., both multimillion dollar companies. He will remain CEO of that company.

During his tenure at Twitter, revenue for the social media giant has grown sluggishly, with the New York Times reporting that a stock in the company is now worth roughly the same as it was a year ago.

As the new CEO, Agrawal will now have incredibly tough targets to meet, after Twitter announced earlier this year it aims to double its annual revenue by 2023 and 315 million monetizable daily active users. 

Dorsey was previously pushed out of his leadership position in the company in 2008 amid claims he kept leaving work early to enjoy other pursuits like yoga and fashion design, and chose improvements to the site over revenue. 

In March 2011, Dorsey was named executive chairman, and when new CEO Dick Costolo announced his resignation in June 2015, Dorsey returned.

He will now remain on Twitter’s board of directors through his current term, which runs through 2022, but will step aside as chairman, with current board member Bret Taylor set to assume those responsibilities. Once his term ends, Dorsey told staff, he will leave the company entirely.  

His departure comes after a major bust up between Dorsey and Elliott Management last year, a hedge fund run by Paul Singer which has a substantial stake in Twitter, which ended in the hedge fund trying to replace him as CEO.

While Dorsey managed to hold onto his role, the hedge fund was able to force Twitter to make multiple changes to its corporate structure. It was announced at the time that a board committee would be formed to ‘evaluate the CEO succession plan,’ according to The Verge.

In a statement after the announcement, Elliot Management managing partner Jesse Cohn and senior portfolio manager Marc Steinberg said: ‘Twitter is now executing against an ambitious multi-year plan to dramatically increase the company’s reach and value, and we look forward to the next chapter of Twitter’s story.’

‘Having gotten to know both incoming Chairman Bret Taylor and incoming CEO Parag Agrawal, we are confident that they are the right leaders for Twitter at this pivotal moment for the company.’

After CNBC broke the news of Dorsey’s imminent departure, Twitter’s share price soared by 11 percent, while those of Square Inc, which Dorsey also serves as the CEO of, were up 3 percent.

By 10am, NASDAQ had announced it would halt trading on the social media giant, but it soon resumed after Dorsey’s announcement, dropping six percent to be up only 5 percent from the day before.

By the afternoon, shares of the social media giant dipped nearly 1 percent. 

On Sunday, Dorsey tweeted: ‘I love Twitter.’ 

In the email to company employees, Dorsey denied that he was pushed out of the company.

He wrote: ‘After almost 16 years of having a role at our company from co-founder to CEO to chair to exec chair to interim CEO to CEO, I decided it’s finally time for me to leave.

‘There’s a lot of talk about the importance of a company being “founder led.” Ultimately, I believe that’s severely limiting and a single point of failure.

‘I’ve worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders,’ he noted, citing Agrawal’s agreement to become CEO and Bret Taylor agreeing to become the board chair as a reason he decided to step down now.

‘The board ran a rigorous process considering all options and unanimously appointed Parag,’ Dorsey wrote of Agrawal. ‘He’s been my choice for some time given how deeply he understands the company and its needs.

‘He’s curious, probing, rational, creative, demanding, self-aware and humble,’ Dorsey continued. ‘He leads with heart and soul and is someone I learn from daily.

‘My trust in him as our CEO is bone deep.’ 

Dorsey also noted to his employees: ‘I want you all to know this was my decision and I own it. It was a tough one for me, of course. I love this company and all of you so much. I’m really sad… yet really happy.

‘There aren’t many companies that get to this level,’ Dorsey continued. ‘And there aren’t many founders that choose their company over ego.

‘I know we’ll prove this was the right move.’   

In response, Agrawal also posted a screengrab of an email he sent to employees, writing: ‘Thank you Jack, I’m honored and humbled, and I’m grateful for your continued mentorship and your friendship.

‘I’m grateful for the service that you built, the culture, soul and purpose you fostered among us and for leading the company through really significant challenges.

‘I’m grateful for the trust you’ve put in me and for your continued partnership.’

Agrawal continued: ‘Team, most of all, I’m grateful for all of you, and it’s you who inspire confidence in our future together.

‘I joined this company 10 years ago when there were fewer than 1,000 employees,’ he wrote. ‘While it was a decade ago, those days feel like yesterday to me.

‘I’ve walked in your shoes, I’ve seen the ups and downs, the challenges and obstacles, the wins and the mistakes,’ Agrawal told the employees. ‘But then and now, above all else, I see Twitter’s incredible impact, our continued progress and the exciting opportunities ahead of us.

‘Our people and our culture are unlike anything in the world.

‘There is no limit to what we can do together,’ he said, concluding by saying: ‘The world is watching us right now, even more than they have before.

‘Lots of people are going to have lots of different views and opinions about today’s news. It is because they care about Twitter and our future, and it’s a signal that the work we do here matters.

‘Let’s show the world Twitter’s full potential.’

Agrawal has been at Twitter since 2011 and served as CTO since 2017. He had been in charge of strategy involving artificial intelligence and machine learning and he led projects to make tweets in users’ timelines more relevant to them.

He is an alumnus of IIT Bombay, where he studied Computer Science and Engineering. He has also held internships at major tech companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and AT&T. 

Former employees told the Wall Street Journal that Agrawal is a close friend of Dorsey’s and they have similar goals.

Bret Taylor, meanwhile, is the president and chief operating officer at Salesforce. He has served on Twitter’s board since July 2016, and previously worked as a chief technology officer at Facebook and a Group Project manager at Google, where he co-created Google Maps, according to his LinkedIn.

Following the announcement on Monday, Taylor tweeted his congratulations to Agrawal and thanked Dorsey for his leadership.

‘I’m honored to be the next chair of Twitter’s board,’ he wrote, adding: ‘Today is an exciting day for Twitter and all of our stakeholders.’ 

The news of Dorsey’s departure comes after years of the social media mogul facing scrutiny for his apparent censorship of conservative voices, with some accusing him of bias.

In January, following the unrest at the Capitol, the company announced it had permanently suspended former President Donald Trump citing ‘the risk of further incitement of violence.’

He later defended the decision in a series of tweets, writing: ‘I do not celebrate or feel pride’ in the ban.

He added, ‘I believe this was the right decision for Twitter. We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety.’ 

‘Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all,’ he continued.

‘Having to take these actions fragment the public conversation. They divide us. They limit the potential for clarification, redemption, and learning. And sets a precedent I feel is dangerous: the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation,’ Dorsey wrote. 

The company also faced criticism after Twitter stopped users from linking to stories alleging Joe Biden may be corrupt ahead of the 2020 election. 

The row exploded after the New York Post reported that Hunter Biden allegedly offered to introduce his Ukrainian business partners to his father, who was vice-president at the time, in exchange for cash.

The report was based on an email recovered from an abandoned laptop that had been turned over to Donald Trump’s Republican allies.

But, despite appearing in a respected newspaper, the social-media giants blocked users from spreading the story, with Facebook saying it had to be fact-checked and Twitter saying it violated its rules on using hacked material.

The Twitter accounts of the newspaper, of the official Trump campaign and of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany were even temporarily banned from posting anything at all because of the furor.

In the aftermath, McEnany accused the social media giant of bias and censorship for only banning content that ‘hurts the side of the aisle that Silicon Valley prefers’.

Speaking with Sean Hannity on Fox News, McEnany accused the media giant of allowing articles that accused Trump of collusion with Russia to be posted on its site, despite the president being cleared during his impeachment trial earlier this year. 

She also revealed that the lock on the account would be permanent unless she deletes the tweets, describing herself as being ‘held at gunpoint’ by the platform. 

‘This was a news story about emails and even the Biden campaign does not dispute the authenticity of the emails. They had a chance today and they didn’t,’ she said, knocking Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s claim that the Biden story had been restricted because personal information was published. 

‘Meanwhile, you have the story about President Trump in The Atlantic where you had more than 20 sources on the record disputing the content of the email. 

‘You have death to Israel that is permitted on Twitter but not an email which is reported by … the New York Post, a credible outlet, you are not allowed to share that information. 

‘Make no mistake, if they can ban the press secretary of the United States for President Trump, they can ban any American citizen and that is pathetic,’ McEnany added.   

‘We have to hold Twitter accountable, and Facebook too, it was banning the transmission of the story simply because ideologically, it hurts the side of the aisle that Silicon Valley prefers. It’s sad, it’s censorship. This is not America.’ 

Afterwards, Dorsey was forced to apologize, describing the decision to block links to the story as ‘unacceptable’.

Dorsey has also faced criticism for apparently allowing misinformation to spread on the social media site – particularly about the COVID vaccine and the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Over the spring, he testified in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee alongside Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai to defend his company.

‘Every day, millions of people around the world tweet hundreds of millions of tweets with one set of rules that applies to everyone and every tweet,’ Dorsey said at the time. ‘We strive to implement policies impartially at scale.

‘We build our policies primarily around the promotion and protection of three fundamental human rights – freedom of expression, safety and privacy,’ he explained to Congress. ‘At times, these rights can conflict with one another.

‘As we develop, implement and enforce our policies, we must balance these rights.

‘Additionally, our policies must be adaptable to changes in behavior and evolving circumstances,’ he said. ‘That is why we must be transparent, embrace procedural fairness and choice, and protect privacy.’

Conservatives now fear Agrawal may crack down on conservative voices even more.

He previously headed Twitter’s BlueSky project, a part of which included addressing algorithms and misinformation on the social media site, which conservative news outlet Town Hall claims was weaponized to prevent certain stories and narratives from gaining traction.

Jason Miller, CEO of conservative social media platform GETTR, also tweeted Monday that Agrawal may be a bigger threat to ‘free speech’ than his predecessor.

And Neil Campling, a global analyst at Mirabaud Equity Research, said in a statement to DailyMail.com the announcement seems like the company ‘appeared to lose direction, struggling to monetize their network and were under pressure from activist Elliott,’ referring to the hedge fund run by Paul Singer.

‘The initial reaction, stock +10%, reflects that Jack had probably run his course and it was time for change,’ Campling said. ‘The fact that the stock reversed all the gains to trade lower is likely reflective of disappointment over who is now the CEO.

‘It is the Chief Technology Officer, so it’s not an external hire which many wanted,’ Campling said. ‘Instead, it is someone who was in charge of the very process that was becoming antiquated and outdated. Not a good look.’