Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Says Conservative Employees Feel Unsafe Speaking Out

TwitterCEO Jack Dorsey has implied that the company’s more conservative employees are too intimidated by Twitter’s political inclinations to the voice their opinion in the workplace.

In a new interview with Recode, Dorsey said:

Recently, Dorsey has been making the rounds, including an appearance before Congress earlier in September, after Republicans and President Trump pushed the idea that Twitter, among other media companies, has been censoring positive messages about them.

“The most basic risk is that someone will criticize you,” Recode writer Jay Rosen said to Dorsey. “Do you ever feel like saying to your conservative employees, ‘Look. Speak up. You might get criticized, but you have to have the courage to do that. We’re not gonna penalize you, but you are, to some degree, when you speak up in public or in a public culture of a company, you are, yes, vulnerable to criticism, vulnerable to reaction. That’s part of public life. That’s part of being a mature citizen?’ Do you ever say that back to them?”

Though Dorsey agreed with Rosen’s point, Dorsey said, “It’s easier said than done.”

He continued, “I was a kid that was very shy. I grew up with a speech impediment. It taught me not to speak at all, and I eventually got over that, and speaking up in a collection of 3,000 people where you make an assumption that they potentially think differently than you or believe differently is hard. It does require sacrificing a lot of your ego and your intellect in being vulnerable for a minute.”