The infamous former iPhone and PS3 hacker George “Geohot” Hotz has resigned from his position at Twitter, just short of a month after Elon Musk hired him to help “fix” the social media site.
Hotz is perhaps best known as the first person to jailbreak the iPhone in 2008, before releasing a hack for the PS3 in 2010 – for which Sony attempted to sue him, with matters being settled out of court.
More recently, Hotz committed to a 12-week internship at Twitter, with Musk ultimately taking him on and tasking him with fixing the site’s search function. Responding to a user casting doubt on the idea that he could fix Twitter’s “broken search in a month”, Hotz responded by saying “that’s what Elon told me my job was, and I will try my hardest to do it. I have 12 weeks.”
It seems that he won’t be finishing those 12 weeks, with Hotz taking to Twitter to announce his resignation, adding that he “didn’t think there was any real impact I could make there.”
It seems that he’s parting with the company on good terms, however. In a series of follow-up tweets, Hotz stated that he was “still rooting for the success of Twitter 2.0.”
Resigned from Twitter today.
Appreciate the opportunity, but didn’t think there was any real impact I could make there. Besides, it was sad to see my GitHub withering. Back to coding! pic.twitter.com/Jbs9LxNB2K
— George Hotz
(@realGeorgeHotz) December 20, 2022
Hotz was previously the founder of Comma AI, a driver-assist technology company that acted as a competitor to Tesla Autopilot, which is also owned by Musk.
He is leaving amid a chaotic time at Twitter, which has been awash with controversy ever since Musk purchased the platform back in October.
Those controversies include banning a number of journalists from the platform, blocking links to rival social media sites and ending Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policy. While many of Musk’s decisions have since been reversed, such as reinstating the accounts of banned journalists and backtracking on its policy regarding other social media sites, his leadership of Twitter has been somewhat controversial.
But it seems that Musk’s time at Twitter might too be at an end soon. He has recently pledged to step down as Twitter CEO, as soon as he finds “someone foolish enough to take the job”.
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