Jack Dorsey Removes Instagram Accounts And Meta Criticism In Musk And Zuckerberg's Conflicts
JAKARTA - Jack Dorsey, one of Twitter's founders, appears to have taken sides in the fight between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg by announcing he had left Instagram and became "free from Meta."
"Delete my Instagram account after 12 years. I believe that I was one of the first 10 accounts, and one of the initial investors," Dorsey wrote in a post on Elon Musk's (previously Twitter) account on August 18.
"Who will they give the handle @jack?" Dorsey continued in the post, and appeared to criticize several other platforms belonging to Meta as well.
He went on to say that he also doesn't have a Facebook or WhatsApp account. "A clear eye, free from Meta, can't lose," he wrote.
Dorsey had previously said that he was not using Meta products, and when asked if he had "disputes" with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook co-founder, in a 2020 podcast, he said they had "different approaches."
When another commentator, according to his bio, worked in analytics on X, asked Dorsey to give "a reason" to delete Instagram, he replied by saying, "All the reasons are too meta to attract."
Dorsey's announcement caught Musk's attention, who responded with a single fire emoji, sparking responses from several commentators who speculated whether Dorsey would keep his profile on X.
Dorsey stepped down from his post as CEO of Twitter in 2021, and in October 2022, Elon Musk acquired the platform. Musk's handling of the company has received intense attention. Dorsey, who is also the co-founder of an app competitor to X named Bluesky, appears to have expressed sympathy for Musk in a post on X in early July, where he said that "managing Twitter is difficult."
On July 5, Meta launched Threads, Twitter's competitor, sparking an online dispute between Zuckerberg and Musk that generates ongoing rumors about the possible fight between these two tech giants.
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Dorsey appears to have tweeted criticism of Zuckerberg's Threads in a previous post on X. On July 4, he appeared to criticize Meta's handling of user privacy by sharing screenshots of data collected by the app, and on July 16, he shared a screenshot which he said showed that Zuckerberg had asked to follow his account on Threads, with his response, "Too soon b."
Dorsey's sources of dissatisfaction with Meta are likely to stem from disputes related to social platforms. According to a 2020 book entitled "No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram" by Bloomberg technology journalist Sarah Frier, Dorsey was involved in the early formation of Instagram, invested before even being called Instagram, and was looking to buy the company.
Dorsey told Vanity Fair in 2013 that he was "destroyed" when he learned that Facebook had acquired Instagram without Twitter's knowledge.
Dorsey has a long history of demeaning Zuckerberg. In 2019, when Facebook was criticized for not verifying the fact of political advertising, Dorsey said that Twitter would stop all political ads and criticize Zuckerberg's free speech argument. He also ridiculed Zuckerberg's plans to turn Facebook's brand into a capital all-capita logo, and his Metaverse plans.