Twitter engineer publicly protests CEO Jack Dorsey, deletes app

Jack
Dorsey.
Getty

• A Twitter engineer has launched a scathing public
  attack on CEO Jack Dorsey, and said he is deleting the app, at
  least for 3 months. 
• Jared Gaut criticised leadership’s attempts to remain
  neutral — an apparent reference to Twitter’s decision not to
  ban conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
• “I believe leadership truly have their hearts in the
  right place and genuinely want Twitter to be a safe place, but
  right now leadership is failing us,” Gaut wrote.
• His tweets have since been retweeted thousands of
  times.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is facing sharp criticism from an
unlikely source — one of his own engineers.

Early on Tuesday morning, Twitter
IT system engineer Jared Gaut took to the social network to voice
his displeasure with recent decisions by the company
leadership, and to announce he was deleting the app
completely for the next three months in protest. 

“I love @twitter, the
company and service, but right now we are making the wrong
decisions,” he wrote. “Everyone at Twitter passionately wants to
make the world better. I believe leadership truly have their
hearts in the right place and genuinely want Twitter to be a safe
place, but right now leadership is failing us.”

His thread quickly drew widespread attention, and it has now been
retweeted almost 3,500 times, and been liked over 10,000 times.

Gaut’s criticism appears to be a rebuttal to Dorsey’s decision to
allow conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to remain on Twitter — even
as other tech companies, from YouTube to Facebook, booted him
from their platforms in the face of sustained public criticism
over the spread of misinformation on their platforms. 

Dorsey has insisted that Jones has not violated Twitter’s rules
(a
claim that an investigation from CNN has contested), arguing
that Twitter has a duty to remain impartial and should not “react
to outside pressure.” 

It is this pro-neutrality line of argument that Gaut appears to
have taken issue with, and suggests it may be backfiring. “We are
not a government. We do not need to be neutral. The feeling that
we are making the tough, right call by remaining neutral is
wrong. Our inaction is suppressing voices — disabling
conversation.”

He added: “We may come around and make the right decision this
time, but how long until we are right here again? We are stuck in
an infinite loop.”

As such, Gaut said, he is deleting the app for the rest of the
third quarter of 2018, and “signing out of all browsers.” His
Twitter bio now says he is “on a twitter break.”

It’s not clear what Twitter’s response to the engineer’s actions
is, or whether he will be reprimanded for speaking out. A
spokesperson did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s
request for comment.

Here’s Jared Gaut’s full thread: