Elon Musk hired Linda Yaccarino, a seasoned advertising executive, in May 2023 after purchasing Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and significantly reducing its workforce. Musk initially stated that Yaccarino would primarily oversee the company’s business operations, while he focused on product design and new technologies. Before her appointment, Musk remarked that whoever took on the CEO role “must like pain a lot.”
Yaccarino faced the challenge of restoring confidence among major advertisers after months of turmoil following Musk’s takeover. She also had to operate alongside Musk’s dominant presence on X, formerly Twitter, as he relaxed content moderation policies in the name of free speech and reinstated previously banned accounts.
Emarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg noted, “Being CEO of X was always a tough job, and Yaccarino lasted longer than many expected. Managing the business while handling a mercurial owner who continued to use the platform as his personal megaphone meant constantly dealing with crises.”
Earlier this year, Yaccarino’s position became uncertain after Musk merged X with his artificial intelligence company, xAI. Advertising challenges persisted, with many companies cutting back spending due to concerns that looser content rules were enabling hateful and toxic speech to grow.
Most recently, an update to Musk’s AI chatbot Grok sparked a surge of antisemitic comments, including praise for Adolf Hitler. The Grok account acknowledged awareness of the posts and said efforts were underway to remove inappropriate content, though no details were provided.
Some experts link Grok’s behavior to Musk’s intentional efforts to shape it as an alternative to chatbots he views as overly “woke,” like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. In June, Musk invited X users to help train Grok by submitting “divisive facts” — defined as politically incorrect but factually true — which led to an influx of racist and conspiratorial responses. Similar instructions for Grok later directed it not to shy away from politically incorrect claims if well substantiated, though this was eventually removed.
Computer science professor Talia Ringer commented, “This clearly shows Elon’s involvement.”
Yaccarino has not publicly addressed the recent hate speech issues but has at times defended Musk’s approach. This includes a lawsuit against liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America over a report claiming top advertisers’ posts appeared alongside extremist content, which caused some advertisers to pause activity on X.
A federal judge dismissed a separate lawsuit filed by X against the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate, which tracks rising hate speech on the platform since Musk’s acquisition.
X is also embroiled in legal disputes with major advertisers—including CVS, Mars, Lego, Nestle, Shell, and Tyson Foods—alleging a “massive advertiser boycott” that cost the company billions and violated antitrust laws.
Enberg observed that “to some extent, Yaccarino achieved what she was hired to do.” Emarketer forecasts X’s advertising revenue to recover and grow in 2025 after it was more than halved between 2022 and 2023 under Musk’s leadership. However, she added, “the reasons for X’s ad recovery are complex, and Yaccarino was unable to fully restore the platform’s reputation with advertisers.”
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