Former Disney CEO Bob Iger appeared at the Code Conference earlier this week, and mentioned he suggested the company purchase Twitter in 2016.
Iger, who said he was quickly rebuffed, said the sticking point of the deal was similar to the concerns Elon Musk had when exploring a purchase of the social media site: the amount of bots and fake accounts.
“Then, after we sold the whole concept to the Disney board and the Twitter board, and we’re really ready to execute — the negotiation was just about done — I went home, contemplated it for a weekend, and thought, ‘I’m not looking at this as carefully as I need to look at it.’ Yes, it’s a great solution from a distribution perspective. But it would come with so many other challenges and complexities that as a manager of a great global brand, I was not prepared to take on a major distraction and having to manage circumstances that weren’t even close to anything that we had faced before.”
Iger said the deal fell apart after the 2016 election, saying the potential for hate on the platform didn’t align with Disney’s brand.
“Then you have to look, of course, at all the hate speech and potential to do as much harm as good. We’re in the business of manufacturing fun at Disney — of doing nothing but good, even though there are others today that criticize Disney for the opposite, which is wrong. This was just something that we were not ready to take on and I was not ready to take on as the CEO of a company and I thought it would have been irresponsible.”
