Dorsey quit as Twitter CEO in November last year, handing over the baton to Indian-origin Parag Agrawal who was then the CTO of the company.
At the time, Twitter noted that Dorsey would stay on the board "until his term expires at the 2022 meeting of stockholders".
Dorsey has categorically said that he will never be the CEO of Twitter again, as reports of him rejoining the micro-blogging platform surfaced after the $44 billion takeover by Musk.
Dorsey, who is now running the financial payments platform Block (earlier Square), also said that no one should be the CEO of Twitter.
At the shareholders' meeting on Wednesday, Twitter's board voted to oust board member and Musk ally Egon Durban, CEO of private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, reports TechCrunch.
Durban led Musk's deal team during the 2018 failed effort to take Tesla private.
Musk has put the $44 billion Twitter deal on hold over the presence of fake/spammy accounts and wants the micro-blogging platform to come clean on the actual number of bots.
Dorsey holds 2.4 per cent or a little over 18 million shares in the company and after once the $44 billion deal is closed, his Twitter shocks will be converted into cash, reports The Warp.
With Musk's offer to buy each Twitter share for $54.20, Dorsey would receive a $978 million in cash.
Dorsey famously took a $1.40 annual paycheck while serving as Twitter CEO since its launch in 2006.
Current CEO Parag Agrawal will receive nearly $39 million due to a clause in his contract.
Agrawal's total compensation for 2021 was $30.4 million, largely in stocks.
The company's CFO Ned Segal would receive $25.4 million if leaves the company.
The chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde would get $12.4 million, whereas Twitter's chief customer officer Sarah Personette would receive $11.2 million.
Twitter's board chair Bret Taylor would receive a payout of just over $3 million and former board chair Omid Kordestani would get $50.6 million in his payout, the report mentioned.
Twitter has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Musk for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction valued at nearly $44 billion.
Upon completion of the transaction, Twitter will become a privately-held company.
The purchase price represents a 38 per cent premium to Twitter's closing stock price on April 1, which was the last trading day before Musk disclosed his nearly nine per cent stake in Twitter.
In his latest tweet, Dorsey, who renamed his financial services company Square to Block in December last year, said: "We're officially building an open bitcoin mining system".
In a Twitter thread, Thomas Templeton, Block's general manager for hardware, later outlined the company's goals for the Bitcoin mining system.
"We want to make mining more distributed and efficient in every way, from buying, to set up, to maintenance, to mining. We're interested because mining goes far beyond creating new bitcoin. We see it as a long-term need for a future that is fully decentralised and permissionless," he tweeted.
According to Templeton, Block is open to building its own ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit which is an integrated circuit chip customised for a particular use).
"We're incubating this investigation within Block's hardware team and are starting to build out a core engineering team of system, asic, and software designers," Templeton informed.
Last year, Dorsey announced plans to create a new business focused on building an open developer platform for Bitcoin.
Called 'TBD,' the new business joins existing payments services like Seller, Cash App and Tidal) "with the sole goal of making it easy to create non-custodial, permission-less, and decentralised financial services," Dorsey said in a tweet.
"Our primary focus is #Bitcoin. Its name is TBD," he added.
According to a new study by Science Direct, at peak Bitcoin price levels seen early in 2021, the annual amount of e-waste may grow beyond 64.4 metric kilotonnes in the midterm, which highlights the dynamic trend if the Bitcoin price rises further.
"E-waste represents a growing threat to our environment, from toxic chemicals and heavy metals leaching into soils, to air and water pollution caused by improper recycling," said the study.
This mining system had also created pressure for miners to run only the latest, fastest, most energy-efficient computer chips and discard older ones.
The soaring demand for mining hardware can also disrupt global semiconductor supply chains.
"The e-waste problem will probably grow further if the price of bitcoin continues to rise, since it will incentivise further investment in and replacement of ASIC hardware," the study noted.
As per the United Nations, e-waste is the world's fastest-growing waste stream, up 21 per cent between 2014 and 2019 to 53.6 million metric tonnes and less than one-fifth of that is recycled.
Dorsey will remain a member of the Board until his term expires at the 2022 meeting of stockholders.
Agrawal has been with Twitter for more than a decade and has served as Chief Technology Officer since 2017.
"I've decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders. My trust in Parag as Twitter's CEO is deep. His work over the past 10 years has been transformational. I'm deeply grateful for his skill, heart, and soul. It's his time to lead," said Dorsey.
Agrawal said: "I look forward to building on everything we have accomplished under Jack's leadership and I am incredibly energised by the opportunities ahead. By continuing to improve our execution, we will deliver tremendous value for our customers and shareholders as we reshape the future of public conversation."
Dorsey returned to lead the company as CEO in 2015 despite being forced out of the post in 2008.
In a letter to employees, Dorsey said he will serve out his term on the board of directors until "May-ish" when he will also leave that position.
New CEO Agrawal joined the company in 2011 as an ads engineer, eventually taking the title of CTO in 2018.
In addition to Agrawal's appointment to the Board, the Company announced that Bret Taylor, a member of the Twitter Board since 2016, has been named Independent Chair of the Board, effective immediately.
A staunch supporter of Bitcoin, Dorsey said that the world of cryptocurrency allows speed, a lot more innovation and opens up entirely new use cases.
"If the Internet has a native currency, a global currency, we are able to move faster with products such as Super Follows, e-commerce, Subscription, Tip Jar and we can reach every single person on the planet," Dorsey said during the Q2 investors' call on Thursday.
"There are three trends relevant to Twitter and our shareholders. AI, decentralisation and the Internet, finally having access to a global native currency in Bitcoin. All these will help us do our jobs better and we intend to lead the way in each," he emphasised.
In Q2 2021, Twitter saw its revenue reached $1.19 billion, an increase of 74 per cent (year-over-year).
The micro-blogging platform now has 206 million average monetisable DAU (mDAU) in Q2, up 11 per cent.
"As we enter the second half of 2021, we are shipping more, learning faster, and hiring remarkable talent. There's a tremendous opportunity to get the whole world to use Twitter," said Dorsey.
Dorsey and rap artist Jay-Z recently announced to invest 500 Bitcoins (approximately Rs 174 crore) in an endowment to fund Bitcoin development with a focus on India and Africa.
For Dorsey, Bitcoin is like poetry and that he sees ample opportunity for Bitcoin to bring about a sea change in the world.
"Most people access the internet on mobile. Any solution we build must provide an excellent experience when using mobile, despite its shortcomings and liabilities. An uncompromising focus on mobile interaction is likely to include the most people," he had said.
He has announced plans to consider making a hardware wallet for Bitcoin for the customers of its digital payments services company Square.
"Jack Dorsey, the Co Founder and CEO of Twitter dropped in to chat this morning.
"Twitter has grown into the most dominant 'conversation' platform globally. Jack explained some of the steps being taken to keep those conversations healthy and measures being taken to tackle the menace of fake news," Gandhi tweeted.
The micro-blogging platform, that has 336 million users globally, is working hard to increase the collective health, openness and civility of dialogue on its platform.
Dorsey, who arrived in India on his maiden visit last week, also met the Dalai Lama over the weekend, calling him an "amazing teacher".
"Thank you for not actually pulling out my nose ring, despite a lot of painful effort," he tweeted after meeting the Dalai Lama.
Dorsey was also expected to meet Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in the wake of the growing criticism over Twitter's role in the spread of misinformation and fake news as India faces Assembly polls in five states ahead of the general elections next year.
In an internal email which was obtained by Wired.com, Twitter's head of safety policy has emailed members of its Trust and Safety Council on new rules to promote free speech and curb violence and sexual harassment.
"We hope our approach and upcoming changes, as well as our collaboration with the Trust and Safety Council, show how seriously we are rethinking our rules and how quickly we're moving to update our policies and how we enforce them," Twitter said on Wednesday.
"We will immediately and permanently suspend any account we identify as the original poster/source of non-consensual nudity and/or if a user makes it clear they are intentionally posting said content to harass their target," the email read.
"If the account appears to be dedicated to posting non-consensual nudity then we will suspend the entire account immediately," it added.
On hate symbols and imagery, it said: "We are still defining the exact scope of what will be covered by this policy. At a high level, hateful imagery, hate symbols, etc will now be considered sensitive media (similar to how we handle and enforce adult content and graphic violence)".
On violent groups, Twitter said it will take enforcement action against organisations that use or have historically used violence as a means to advance their cause.
"Consistent interpretation and enforcement of our rules is our objective. We also need to remove the burden of reporting from those who are targeted. We've prioritised the work," Dorsey said in a tweet.
"While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics," company CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted, the BBC reported on Wednesday.
Social media rival Facebook recently ruled out a ban on political ads.
News of the ban divided America's political camps for the 2020 election.
Brad Parscale, manager of President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, said the ban was "yet another attempt by the left to silence Trump and conservatives".
But for Bill Russo, spokesman for the campaign to elect Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, "When faced with a choice between ad dollars and the integrity of our democracy, it is encouraging that, for once, revenue did not win out."
The ban will be enforced from November 22, with full details released by November 15.
Dorsey explained his position in a thread of tweets.
"We've made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons..." he tweeted.
Internet political ads, he said, presented "entirely new challenges to civic discourse".
These challenges included "machine learning-based optimization of messaging", "micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes".
"It's not credible," he wrote, "for us to say: 'We're working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, but if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad... well...they can say whatever they want!'"
Countering the argument that the new policy might be seen as favouring leaders already in office, he pointed out that "many social movements reach massive scale without any political advertising".
Ads in support of voter registration would not be affected by the ban, he added.
"We've made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought," Dorsey posted on Wednesday.
According to him, a political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet.
"Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money," he added.
Social media rival Facebook recently ruled out a ban on political ads.
News of the ban divided America's political camps for the 2020 election.
Brad Parscale, manager of President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, said the ban was "yet another attempt by the left to silence Trump and conservatives".
But for Bill Russo, spokesman for the campaign to elect Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, "When faced with a choice between ad dollars and the integrity of our democracy, it is encouraging that, for once, revenue did not win out."
The ban will be enforced from November 22, with full details released by November 15.
"While Internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions.
"Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale," Dorsey elaborated.
According to him, we considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent.
"Additionally, it isn't fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we're stopping these too.
"We're well aware we‘re a small part of a much larger political advertising ecosystem. Some might argue our actions today could favour incumbents. But we have witnessed many social movements reach a massive scale without any political advertising. I trust this will only grow," Dorsey noted.
In addition, he said, we need more forward-looking political ad regulation (very difficult to do).
In a series of tweets, he said it's important to show his work so others can learn.
"I'm moving $1B of my Square equity (28 per cent of my wealth) to #startsmall LLC to fund global COVID-19 relief. After we disarm this pandemic, the focus will shift to girl's health and education, and UBI. It will operate transparently," Dorsey said.
Also Read: COVID-19 Fight: Support Pours In From Many Quarters For PM-CARES Fund
I’m moving $1B of my Square equity (~28% of my wealth) to #startsmall LLC to fund global COVID-19 relief. After we disarm this pandemic, the focus will shift to girl’s health and education, and UBI. It will operate transparently, all flows tracked here: https://t.co/hVkUczDQmz
— jack (@jack) April 7, 2020
Why pull just from Square and not Twitter?
"Simply: I own a lot more Square. And I'll need to pace the sales over some time. The impact this money will have should benefit both companies over the long-term because it's helping the people we want to serve," he added.
Why now? The needs are increasingly urgent, and I want to see the impact in my lifetime. I hope this inspires others to do something similar. Life is too short, so let’s do everything we can today to help people now. ✌?
— jack (@jack) April 7, 2020
Dorsey also tweeted a link to a public Google Doc where people can track which organisations the fund's money will go to. He said the needs are increasingly urgent, and he wants to see the impact in his lifetime.
"I hope this inspires others to do something similar. Life is too short, so let's do everything we can today to help people now," he noted.
Dorsey said he has funded $40 million in grants to many organisations with proven impact and efficiency in the past, mostly anonymously.
Also Read: COVID-19: Sony Pictures Networks To Donate Rs 100 Million To Media & Entertainment Industries
"Going forward, all grants will be public," said Dorsey who was about to lose his Twitter job but the micro-blogging platform entered into a "cooperation agreement" with activist hedge fund Elliott Management Corp. which earlier launched a bid to remove Dorsey as head of the social media company.
(IANS)
According to the cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, the major scam flags the fact that we are living in the era when even people with computer skills might be lured into a scammers trap and even the most secure accounts can be hacked.
"In our estimates, within just two hours, at least 367 users have transferred around $1,20,000 in total to attackers. Neither a website/software is entirely immune to bugs nor is the human factor immune to mistakes. Therefore, any native platforms might be compromised," Dmitry Bestuzhev, Cybersecurity expert at Kaspersky, told IANS.
Twitter admitted it was a "coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools".
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has also apologized.
"Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened," Dorsey tweeted after the accounts of major public figures including US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Apple and Uber were simultaneously hacked by attackers to spread a cryptocurrency scam.
Arjun Vijay, Co-Founder and COO of Giottus Cryptocurrency Exchange, said such scams have happened in the past but never at this scale.
"It was a well-coordinated attack where multiple accounts got hacked at the same time, with the same tweets directing users to the same scam site," he said in a statement.
"The hacker had complete access to Twitter. He could post anything from any of the official accounts. But he chose to seek Bitcoins through false promises. People should be more careful," Vijay warned.
Paul Ducklin, Principal Research Scientist at cybersecurity firm Sophos said that if Musk, Gates, Apple, Biden or any well-known person or company wanted to hand out huge amounts of money on a whim, they wouldn't demand that you hand them money first.
"That's not a gift, it's a trick, and it's an obvious sign that the person's account has been hacked. If in doubt, leave it out!" he said.
Cryptocurrency transactions don't have the legal protections that you get with banks or payment card companies.
"There is no fraud reporting service or transaction cancellation in the world of cryptocurrency. Sending someone cryptocoins is like handing over banknotes to in an envelope - if they go to a crook, you will never see them again. If in doubt, don't send it out!" he added.
Some high-level employees at Twitter were targeted by Social Engineering campaigns to gain access to high profile accounts.
"If purely digital companies like Twitter can be breached through social engineering attacks, then other organizations and individuals are not safe either. Cybersecurity is everybody's responsibility and employees can be an organisation's best defence," Himanshu Dubey, Director, Quick Heal Security Labs, told IANS.
(IANS)
Also Read:
Twitter Accounts of Barack Obama, Bill Gates And Several Others Hacked
Twitter To Soon Notify Users To Read Articles Before Retweeting
Dorsey last year announced a non-profit platform called Bluesky to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media.
"Blockchain and Bitcoin point to a future, point to a world, where content exists forever. We're not in the content hosting business anymore, we're in the discovery business," the Square CEO said during the virtual Oslo Freedom Forum 2020 last Friday.
Dorsey expects Blue Sky to create an open Twitter protocol, which users can contribute to and access data from instead of a centralized service where the social media platform hosts content on its website.
"(Blue Sky) is a completely separate nonprofit from the company (Twitter)," Dorsey said.
"We'll focus on becoming a client of it so we can build a compelling service and business where anyone can access and anyone can contribute."
"You see this most fundamentally in bitcoin and in blockchain. The keys will be more and more in the hands of the individual," he added.
Oslo Freedom Forum is "a series of global conferences run by the New York-based non-profit Human Rights Foundation (HRF).
Dorsey said: "I fundamentally believe that security is something that can never be perfected... it's a constant race, it's a constant push to be 10 steps ahead of hackers".
"The whole spirit of Bitcoin, for instance, is to provide a trusted system in a distrusted environment, which is the internet, and those technologies will provide us new capabilities where we can do this internally as well and provide a lot more peace of mind".
Dorsey has made absolutely no secret of his love for cryptocurrency over the years.
Twitter is also considering a feature that would allow users to tip one another in Bitcoins.
The Information reported recently that the micro-blogging platform is working on implementing a new payment feature to let people send money to each other.
According to the Twitter CEO, Bitcoin will one day be the currency of the internet and his company Square integrating cryptocurrency payments.
Dorsey has also hired Bitcoin developers for his payments company.
(IANS)
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This comes after she made controversial remarks about "Tandav" creators through a post. In the now-deleted tweet, Kangana had said that it was "time to take their heads off", for allegedly insulting Hindu gods in the web series.
Now, the actress has slammed the "liberal community" who reported her account to Twitter, going on to call Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey "chacha".
"Librus cried to their chacha @jack and got my account temporarily restricted," she wrote.
Librus cried to their chacha @jack and got my account temporarily restricted, they are threatening me mera account/virtual identity kabhi bhi desh keliye shaheed ho sakti hai,magar my reloaded desh bhakt version will reappear through my movies.Tumhara jeena dushwar karke rahungi.
— Kangana Ranaut (@KanganaTeam) January 20, 2021
She continued: "They are threatening me mera account/virtual identity kabhi bhi desh keliye shaheed ho sakti hai,magar my reloaded desh bhakt version will reappear through my movies.Tumhara jeena dushwar karke rahungi.(They are threatening me that my account and my virtual identity might get martyred for the country anytime. But my reloaded patriotic spirit will reappear through my movies. I will make your life miserable."
"Tandav" has come under fire with several people alleging that it provokes communal disharmony and hurts the sentiments of the Hindus. According to the complaints, a scene featuring Mohd. Zeeshan Ayyub performing a college play insults the Hindu deity Shiv.
Show creator Ali Abbas Zafar has apologised on behalf of the entire cast and crew, saying they did not intend to offend anyone or insult any religion and political party. They have even said that they will make changes in the content "to address concerns".
(IANS)