Linda Yaccarino is stepping down as X’s CEO — and leaving the platform once known as Twitter in a worse place than when she started.
A day after X users circulated viral screenshots of the company’s Grok chatbot denigrating Jews and declaring itself “MechaHitler,” Yaccarino thanked Elon Musk for “entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.” She said that the platform started “the critical early work necessary to prioritize the safety of our users—especially children” and that the X Money payment platform would be arriving “soon.”
But in the spirit of X’s own Community Notes, let’s break those claims down.
“Protecting free speech”
Musk, who has called himself a free speech absolutist, supposedly bought Twitter in 2022 because of “its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe.” But as my colleague Adi Robertson wrote at the time, “despite his sweeping declaration, Musk’s eye seems almost entirely focused on the far smaller question of Twitter’s own internal rules.”
Ahead of Yaccarino joining, Musk addressed some of his issues with Twitter’s rules by allowing some of the worst people on the internet back to the platform. But under Yaccarino’s CEO tenure, X has caved to government censorship requests abroad while using lawsuits to harass its critics in the US:
- It’s complied with government requests to take down content, such as an order to block accounts and posts from Turkey (which the platform said it would “continue to object in court”) — which wasn’t a new practice for Twitter, but doesn’t exactly demonstrate a fresh dedication to free speech.
- After Musk blasted Twitter for suppressing links to hacked material from Hunter Biden, X blocked links to a hacked document that was allegedly a dossier of research about JD Vance and temporarily suspended the journalist who published it on his newsletter — reportedly after the Trump campaign flagged it.
- X blocked links to Signal and seemingly throttled links to competitors and to some news sites.
- Musk has sued Media Matters and the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) for pointing out extremism on the platform and filed suits against advertisers for declining to place ads on it; a judge declared the CCDH suit a clear attempt at “punishing the Defendants for their speech.”
“Turning the company around”
Official metrics are hard to pin down here, but financial and usage estimates suggest that X is generally on a downward trend. Not great for the person Musk said was supposed to be in charge of the platform’s “business operations.”
Musk has painted a bright picture of X, saying in May 2024 that the platform had “600 million monthly active users.” In March 2024, Yaccarino said that there had been “a 12% jump in time spent on the platform since last year.” But data shared with The Verge from digital intelligence platform Similarweb indicates that X has actually lost a huge chunk of its active user base since Yaccarino took over.
In June 2023, when Yaccarino officially stepped into the role, the platform had 388.5 million users across its iOS and Android apps, according to Similarweb; as of last month, it had 311.1 million users — a loss of over 75 million.
Yaccarino was formerly an ad executive at NBC Universal, and part of her job was to shore up shaky relationships after incidents like Musk endorsing white pride — which caused companies like Apple and Disney to pull back spending on the platform — and telling advertisers at a New York Times event to “go fuck yourself.” (Yaccarino characterized that last one “an explicit point of view about our position.”)
It’s true that Apple returned to advertise on X earlier this year, and Bloomberg reported on eMarketer estimates in March that said X is projected to have its first year of advertising growth in 2025. But did Yaccarino have much to do with that? According to an eMarketer exec at the time, the increased ad spending is partially due to Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration — it’s a lot easier to keep advertisers when the FTC can force companies to work with you. Musk and Trump’s relationship is much rockier now, so the long-term success of that plan is looking increasingly unclear, even if Yaccarino boasted that the platform has “welcomed” 96 percent of its “top advertisers” back to the platform.
One other metric of X not actually turning around? Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, but when Musk’s xAI bought X earlier this year, it valued X at $33 billion on paper.
“Transforming X into the Everything App”
As I’ve written about before, Musk has had intentions of building some kind of WeChat-like super app for a long time, but the X of today still looks very much like the Twitter of yesteryear.
X’s primary use is still as a social media platform: users are scrolling through post after post after post, perhaps sometimes pinging Grok for AI-generated commentary. Yes, there are new, small features like audio and voice calls and a dedicated vertical video tab copying apps like TikTok or Instagram. But its “X Money” payments system still hasn’t arrived, even though Yaccarino announced in January that it would be arriving “later this year.” After X being folded into Musk’s AI company and losing Yaccarino as CEO, it’s unclear how much of a priority the feature might be — especially for X’s new head of product, who seems a little more focused on the lols.
And about Grok. The bot was updated to be more “politically incorrect” just before Yaccarino announced her departure, and it promptly flooded X with antisemitism and repeatedly praised Hitler before text responses were turned off. The timing is strikingly awful, even if The New York Times reported that Yaccarino had “discussed her plans to leave with X employees earlier this week, before the incident with Grok.”
“The critical early work necessary to prioritize the safety of our users—especially children”
Nearly every platform struggles with moderating things like hate and harassment, but Musk deprioritized trust and safety before Yaccarino’s arrival, and there’s little evidence she’s made meaningful strides to build the program back up — the CCDH (which, you’ll remember, X sued for its criticism) reported hateful content was flourishing in late 2023. Yaccarino helmed X during a flood of graphic Taylor Swift AI fakes early last year; one post got more than 45 million views and was live for around 17 hours before the user was suspended. The incident resulted in lawmakers introducing an anti-nonconsensual AI porn bill that passed the Senate.
As for “especially children,” the company reportedly has serious problems managing child sexual abuse material (CSAM). While X said in 2024 that it had suspended significantly more accounts in 2023 than in 2022 for violating its child sexual exploitation policies, the platform is also contending with accounts using hashtags to try and sell and advertising CSAM in X Communities, as reported in June by NBC News. In fact, X actually unbanned a high-profile influencer in July 2023 who was removed for posting a still from an infamous CSAM video.
Yaccarino didn’t specify when she’s stepping down from X. Her profile now says that she is the “Super Official eX CEO of X,” so it seems like her work may already be done. She also didn’t say who may replace her, and Musk hasn’t, either.
But one thing has been clear throughout her two-year tenure: it was always really Musk behind the wheel.
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