Linda Yaccarino, CEO of Elon Musk’s X, to step down in surprise move
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Part of Ms Linda Yaccarino’s job as CEO of X was to manage billionaire owner Elon Musk.
PHOTO: AFP
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SAN FRANCISCO – Billionaire Elon Musk-owned social platform X’s CEO, Ms Linda Yaccarino, said on July 9 she would step down from the role in a surprise move.
Her exit comes at a difficult time for Mr Musk, who is dealing with falling sales at his electric vehicle maker Tesla and is embroiled in a war of words
Ms Yaccarino, 61, did not give a specific reason for her decision.
She took the top job in 2023
Immediately upon joining, Ms Yaccarino had her work cut out for her.
Mr Musk quickly made changes that tore up much of the goodwill Twitter had with users, employees and advertisers, including changing speech policies that allowed noxious content to circulate on the platform. Many advertisers left.
The company later sued many advertisers and an advertising group, alleging that they colluded to deny X ad dollars.
Part of Ms Yaccarino’s mandate, aside from running day-to-day operations at the company, was to repair those broken relationships.
She grew close with Mr Musk early in 2023 when she was an executive at NBCUniversal, and when she pledged to keep running ads on Twitter as other advertisers were refusing to do so. The two began texting regularly, with Mr Musk ultimately persuading her to run the company.
The other part of her job has been to manage Mr Musk.
Famously impulsive, the billionaire has frequently made her job more difficult, including using expletives to tell advertisers that he would not be changing his ways.
He has clashed with foreign governments which have requested takedowns of certain social media accounts.
Mr Musk also erased Twitter’s iconic internet brand by renaming the company X
Ms Yaccarino has grappled with the challenges and in public social media posts, maintained an upbeat attitude as cheerleader-in-chief, even as Mr Musk fired off late-night posts that infuriated many users while also galvanising his supporters.
In March, Mr Musk’s AI start-up xAI acquired X
Its chatbot Grok removed what it called “inappropriate” social media posts on July 8 after complaints from X users and the Anti-Defamation League that Grok produced content with anti-Semitic tropes. REUTERS, BLOOMBERG
