Technology & Power
NewsOnScale Staff
October 25, 2026
Jack Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006. For sixteen years he built and ran the platform that became the primary infrastructure of American political speech. He described it as the public square. He testified before Congress about its commitment to free expression. He said under oath that Twitter did not shadow ban based on political ideology or viewpoint.
The Twitter Files — internal documents released after Elon Musk acquired the platform — told a different story.
What the Twitter Files revealed
Under Dorsey's leadership Twitter built what investigators described as a one-way pipeline for the FBI to flag accounts and content for censorship. The FBI paid Twitter over $3 million in taxpayer money — categorized as reimbursement for processing government requests — while simultaneously sending lists of accounts for the platform to review, suppress, or remove.
The FBI's requests were phrased carefully — framed as bringing information to Twitter's attention rather than direct orders. But the practical effect was a system in which a federal law enforcement agency with no legal authority to censor private speech was functionally directing content moderation decisions at America's primary political communication platform.
Twitter hired James Baker — the former general counsel of the FBI — as its own deputy general counsel. The man who had been the FBI's top lawyer became Twitter's top lawyer. The pipeline between the Bureau and the platform was not just operational. It was personnel.
The documents revealed that Twitter suppressed the New York Post's reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop in October 2020 — weeks before a presidential election — based on FBI framing of the story as potential Russian disinformation. The FBI had prior knowledge of the laptop's existence and its authenticity. The framing as disinformation was not supported by evidence. Twitter suppressed the story anyway.
Dorsey later called some of what the Files revealed "questionable." He said he was "surprised by the level of engagement with government agencies." He said he "never saw" much of what the documents showed.
He was the CEO.
What Dorsey said under oath
In September 2018 Dorsey testified before Congress. He was asked directly whether Twitter shadow banned accounts based on political viewpoint. He said no. He was asked whether Twitter limited the visibility of certain accounts and tweets. He said no.
The Twitter Files showed that Twitter maintained an internal system called visibility filtering — a mechanism that limited how widely tweets could be seen without notifying the account holder. The company had an internal list of accounts that received reduced distribution. The list included journalists, political commentators, and ordinary users flagged by government agencies.
What Dorsey denied under oath appears to contradict what the documents show was operating during his tenure.
The origin story
Jack Dorsey grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. His father was a Catholic and his mother a Lutheran. He attended Bishop DuBourg High School and later the University of Missouri and New York University, dropping out of NYU in 2000. He worked as a programmer and massage therapist before co-founding Twitter in 2006 with Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Ev Williams.
Twitter was initially funded by venture capital from Union Square Ventures and Benchmark — standard Silicon Valley money, no direct government seed funding in the founding story. Dorsey's origin is more straightforward than most in this series.
What is not straightforward is what he built and what he allowed it to become.
The FBI money
The FBI paid Twitter over $3 million. The payments were described as reimbursement for the cost of processing government legal requests — a technically legal arrangement that exists between the government and major platforms. The legal structure creates an incentive: the more government requests a platform processes, the more government money it receives.
A platform financially incentivized to process government content requests, staffed by former FBI officials, maintaining a direct communication channel with the FBI's foreign influence task force, is not operating as a neutral public square. It is operating as an extension of federal law enforcement.
Dorsey presided over all of it.
The Bluesky question
While Dorsey was still CEO of Twitter — while the FBI pipeline was operating, while the shadow banning was running, while the Hunter Biden story was being suppressed — he used Twitter's own money to secretly fund the development of Twitter's replacement.
In 2019 Dorsey announced Project Bluesky inside Twitter. Twitter funded it. The stated goal was a decentralized open protocol for social media — the opposite of the centralized, government-accessible platform Twitter had become under his watch.
When Musk bought Twitter in 2022 Bluesky spun out as an independent company carrying the Twitter funding with it. Bluesky raised $8 million in seed funding in 2023, $15 million in Series A in 2024, and $100 million in Series B in April 2025 — total funding now exceeding $123 million.
Dorsey joined Bluesky's board after leaving Twitter. Then in May 2024 he quietly left Bluesky's board without explanation. He posted no statement. He answered one question on X with a single word: "no." When asked why he left he did not respond.
Days later he called Musk's X a "freedom platform."
The man who built the FBI pipeline into Twitter, then used Twitter's money to build Twitter's replacement, then left that replacement without explanation, then called the platform he sold to Musk a freedom platform — has not explained the full arc of those decisions to anyone.
The Tor Project connection
Through his philanthropic Start Small initiative Dorsey donated $1 million to the Tor Project — the nonprofit that operates the anonymous browsing network used by journalists, dissidents, and privacy advocates worldwide.
The Tor Project receives 43% of its funding from government sources. The US government provides 35% of its budget — funding that comes from various departments and agencies including the Department of Defense via DARPA.
The man who let the FBI censor Twitter is funding the privacy tool that DARPA also funds. The privacy network that supposedly protects people from government surveillance is itself substantially funded by the government whose surveillance it supposedly protects people from.
Jack Dorsey's $1 million sits alongside DARPA's money in the Tor Project's budget. The layers of this are not accidental. They are the architecture of a system that funds both the surveillance and the appearance of protection from it.
What Dorsey posted after leaving Twitter
In May 2023 — months after the Twitter Files exposed the FBI relationship he oversaw — Jack Dorsey posted on Twitter: "Splinter the CIA, NSA, and FBI into a thousand pieces and scatter them into the winds."
The quote is from President John F. Kennedy, who made the same threat against the CIA after the Bay of Pigs.
The response from the platform's users was immediate: where was this attitude when the FBI was sending lists of accounts to suppress? Where was this attitude when Twitter was paying FBI processing fees and hiring FBI general counsels? Where was this attitude when the Hunter Biden laptop story was being suppressed based on FBI framing three weeks before a presidential election?
Dorsey did not answer those questions directly.
What this means
Jack Dorsey built a company that became the infrastructure of American political speech. Under his leadership that infrastructure was opened to FBI influence, staffed with FBI alumni, financially tied to government reimbursement for processing government requests, and used to suppress political reporting before a presidential election.
He denied it under oath. He used Twitter's own money to build its replacement while the censorship was running. He left that replacement without explanation. He called the platform he sold to Musk a freedom platform. He funded a privacy tool that DARPA also funds. He posted JFK quotes about dismantling the agencies he had just spent sixteen years accommodating.
The public square he built was not neutral. It was not free. And the man who built it has never fully explained what he knew, when he knew it, and what he was building while it was happening.
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