The CEO of X, Elon Musk’s social network, announced on Wednesday she would resign.
“After two incredible years, I’ve decided to step down as CEO of 𝕏,” Linda Yaccarino wrote.
Musk replied to her tweet: “Thank you for your contributions.”
The outgoing CEO said, “When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company. I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, purchased Twitter in 2022 for $44bn and later renamed it X. The billionaire hired Yaccarino the following year, after he fired much of the platform’s staff and announced major changes such as ending content moderation policies. Before joining X, Yaccarino had been a longtime executive at NBCUniversal who focused on advertising and partnerships. In March, Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI acquired the social networking company.
Over the course of Yaccarino’s tenure as CEO, she frequently had to put a positive spin on public relations disasters and Musk’s belligerent behavior. A few months after hiring Yaccarino, Musk gave a public appearance in which he told advertisers to “go fuck yourself” and leave the platform after backlash to his promotion of an antisemitic post. Yaccarino defended his conduct and the company in interviews.
Yaccarino’s own output on X often reflected the more congenial side of the platform and contained earnest retweets of celebrity birthdays or events. The CEO was often forced back into damage control mode, however, including denying reports from the Wall Street Journal earlier this year that X had strong-armed companies to advertise on the platform by threatening lawsuits against them. Under Yaccarino, the company did sue advertisers who had pulled back their spending after Musk’s acquisition and outbursts.
The platform’s issues continued right up until Yaccarino announced her departure. The day before she stepped down, Musk’s Grok chatbot began to post rape fantasies, endorsements of Nazi ideology and identify itself as “MechaHitler” before the company intervened and X took down the posts, apologizing for the “inappropriate” tweets.
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Musk has found himself embroiled in controversy outside of X in recent months. His political alliance with Donald Trump, which began during the 2024 campaign and resulted in Musk’s appointment as a special government employee and the creation of the so-called “department of government efficiency”, imploded in June in full public view. The two men clashed over the US president’s sweeping tax bill, which Musk called an “abomination”. The tech tycoon has committed to starting an independent political party dedicated to ousting Republican members from Congress who voted for the bill, which successfully passed. Meanwhile, Tesla, the source of the majority of Musk’s wealth, has seen its sales fall precipitously in response to his political activities, with prospective buyers and current owners alike shying away from the controversial CEO. SpaceX, Musk’s rocket company, has struggled with its latest rocket, the massive Starship, which has repeatedly exploded after liftoff.