Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey took a dig at Facebook in text messages with Elon Musk.
“Looks like there’s a ‘verified’ account in the swamp of despair over there,” Dorsey texted on April 6.
The text was made public as a part of the pretrial discovery process for Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk on Thursday, and shows how the executive referred to the rival social network in private.
It was one of hundreds of texts between Musk and some of the most powerful men in Silicon Valley, from Larry Ellison to Reid Hoffman. The social media company is suing Musk to force the billionaire to buy the company for $44 billion after attempting to back out of the purchase in July.
In his text, the former Twitter CEO shared a link with a screenshot of a verified Facebook account with Musk’s name on it that appeared to be offering to buy Twitter. The account does not actually appear to belong to the billionaire.
Dorsey noted the fake Facebook account appears to be promoting crypto as well — an issue Musk has been critical of in the past. The Tesla CEO has called out spam accounts on Twitter and YouTube that have also promoted crypto scams using his name.
Musk merely responded to Dorsey’s text: “Haha.”
Dorsey has publicly mocked or criticized Facebook before. Last year, he made a joke after Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was naming Facebook’s parent company Meta. At the time, Dorsey responded with the dictionary definition of the new name.
“Meta: referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential,” Dorsey tweeted.
He also agreed with a tweet saying Zuckerberg’s plans for the metaverse could lead to “a dystopian corporate dictatorship.”
That same month the Twitter cofounder poked fun at Facebook when a security expert shared that Facebook domain name system record had been hacked, putting the site up for sale.
Dorsey has a long history with Facebook. Zuckerberg even once offered to buy Twitter for $500 million when Dorsey was its CEO in 2008. The two also discussed an opportunity for Dorsey to join Facebook after he stepped down from Twitter for the first time that same year.
In a recent court filing in Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk, the billionaire’s legal team said Dorsey had told them in his deposition that he had Twitter executives use Signal in order to avoid using messaging systems tied to Amazon or Meta.
The Twitter cofounder also has mixed feelings when it comes to social media. In his texts with Musk ahead of the billionaire’s Twitter purchase, Dorsey said Twitter should have “never been a company.”
“That was the original sin,” he texted Musk.
Dorsey is a long-time friend of Musk. He was very supportive of the billionaire’s plans to purchase the company.
“I couldn’t be happier you’re doing this,” Dorsey texted Musk on April 5 when he first learned of the Tesla CEO’s initial plans to join Twitter’s board. “I’ve wanted it for a long time. Got very emotional when I learned it was finally possible.”
Dorsey was deposed last month in the trial between Twitter and Musk. A five-day trial over the issue is set to begin on October 17 in the Delaware Court of Chancery.
