Jack Dorsey defends Musk's Twitter leadership, saying the billionaire slashed the 'critical sin' of its business model

Elon Musk's handling of Twitter has been panned as erratic. But the platform's cofounder Jack Dorsey is defending his fellow billionaire's approach, saying Musk's sweeping job cuts and ditching of advertisers made sense for a shift toward free speech.

Dorsey spoke with Mike Solana, who's the head of marketing for the venture-capital firm Founders Fund and the editor of the digital media brand Pirate Wires, in an interview published Thursday. Dorsey said that he shared Musk's goal of creating an internet bastion for free speech and that Twitter had been weighed down by its revenue model.

Twitter chose brand advertising as its main source of income, Dorsey said, a "core, critical sin" that exposed the platform's moderation to the whims of corporations effectively financing the social-media platform.

"And when you're entirely dependent on that, if a brand like P&G or Unilever doesn't like what's happening on the platform, and they threaten to pull the budget, which accounts for like 20% of your revenue? You have no choice," Dorsey told Solana.

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