When Linda Yaccarino introduced her departure from X earlier at the moment, it was huge information, however hardly an enormous shock.
In spite of everything, the seasoned NBCU advertising government had taken on a job that some thought to be all-but unimaginable. For starters, she was to guide an organization that, by altering its title from Twitter to X in 2023, had nullified certainly one of its most recognizable property.
This was additionally an organization that had shed three-quarters of its workforce, despatched its personal advertisers packing with its unhinged content material, and—not least considerably—remained firmly within the grasp of its inimitably vexatious proprietor, Elon Musk.
How does an government lure advertisers again to a platform owned by a person who’d gone on the file saying he “didn’t care” if his inflammatory commentary angered them? Nicely, apparently, one doesn’t.
We could by no means know if it was one incident or a group of them that prompted Yaccarino to pink slip herself, however the file suggests it was in all probability the latter. In her wake, we check out 5 moments from Yaccarino’s tenure that not solely raised eyebrows on the time, however could—within the mixture—have made her departure inevitable.
Squirmy interview no. 1
On April 18, 2023, only a month earlier than she’d be employed as CEO, Yaccarino interviewed Musk on stage at MMA World’s Attainable convention in Miami. To her credit score, Yaccarino wasn’t afraid to carry Musk’s toes to the hearth. She instructed him that advertisers wished “safety for his or her advert campaigns”—which means, assurances that their adverts wouldn’t seem subsequent to hate speech.
At first, Musk humored her by touting his new “adjacency controls.” However when Yaccarino recommended that advertisers be allowed to affect Twitter coverage, he bit. “That might be flawed,” he mentioned. “That might be very flawed.” It was the primary huge squirmy second of Yaccarino’s tenure. There could be extra.
The primary day that wasn’t
Most corporations exit of their solution to make new hires really feel welcomed after they be part of, however Yaccarino wouldn’t obtain that courtesy. After her first day on the job (June 5, 2023), she posted: “It occurred—first day on the books!” Unwilling to relinquish the highlight, nevertheless, Musk had scheduled a headline-grabbing even for a similar day: a Twitter Areas speak with vaccine skeptic (and now Well being and Human Companies Secretary) Robert F. Kennedy.
Stranger nonetheless, Musk used the event to emphasize the hopelessness of the very issues he had employed Yaccarino to repair. “It’s frankly a wrestle for Twitter to interrupt even,” he mentioned, including that “we’ve seen roughly half of our promoting disappear in a single day.”
That little ‘f— you’ incident
Clean and assured, Yaccarino was referred to as “the velvet hammer” for her means to handle contentious conditions with grace and humor. However no velvet could possibly be easy sufficient to hide the PR catastrophe that was Musk’s interview on the November 2023 Dealbook Summit. Questioned about corporations pulling their adverts over Musk’s seeming endorsement of antisemitic content material, he blurted: “If somebody’s going to attempt to blackmail me with promoting… go f— your self.”
In a subsequent memo to X staffers, Yaccarino—her spin machine cranked as much as 11—referred to as Musk’s interview “candid and profound. He shared an unmatched and utterly unvarnished perspective and imaginative and prescient for the long run.”
Squirmy interview no. 2
On Sept. 27, 2023, simply 114 days into her job, Yaccarino sat down with CNBC’s senior media and expertise correspondent Julia Boorstin on the Code Convention. Simply hours beforehand, Yaccarino had discovered she’d be following an on-stage session with Yoel Roth. Twitter’s former head of belief and security had stop a couple of months earlier after Musk publicly implied that Roth (who’s homosexual) was “in favor of kids having the ability to entry grownup web providers.”
Musk’s feedback had resulted in loss of life threats for Roth, who instructed the viewers that Yaccarino “needs to be anxious” about Musk attacking her, too. By the point Yaccarino took the stage, the strain was palpable. “Yoel and I don’t know one another,” she mentioned icily. “I work at X; he labored at Twitter.”
Enter the Hitler bot
Did Yaccarino have a remaining straw second at X? If she did, it probably got here as not too long ago because the day earlier than she stop. On July 8, Grok—the chatbot operated by xAI, which owns X—went rogue, declaring itself to be “MechaHitler” and churning out posts that, amongst different issues, posited rape fantasies, referred to the kids killed within the latest Texas floods as “future fascists,” and declaring that “the white man stands for innovation.” (Grok had additionally not too long ago referred to as Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk “a ginger whore.”)
Whereas X scrambled into damage-control mode (“We’re conscious of latest posts made by Grok and are actively working to take away inappropriate posts”), Yaccarino was nearly able to submit a message of her personal: “After two unbelievable years,” she mentioned on July 9, “I’ve determined to step down as CEO of X.”
X didn’t reply to a request for remark by press time.
