X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced on Wednesday that she is stepping down from her role heading Elon Musk’s social media platform.
Yaccarino, who in 2023 became the first permanent CEO Musk hired after buying the company in 2022, revealed in an X post that, “After two incredible years, I’ve decided to step down as CEO of X.”
“When Elon Musk 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,” Yaccarino wrote.
“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,” Yaccarino — who ran NBCUniversal’s ad business before her tenure at X — continued.
“I’m incredibly proud of the X team — the historic business turn around we have accomplished together has been nothing short of remarkable,” she added.
Yaccarino went on to say, “We started with the critical early work necessary to prioritize the safety of our users — especially children, and to restore advertiser confidence.”
“This team has worked relentlessly from groundbreaking innovations like Community Notes, and, soon, X Money to bringing the most iconic voices and content to the platform. Now, the best is yet to come as X enters a new chapter with xAI,” Yaccarino asserted.
Notably, xAI also developed X’s chatbot, Grok — a rising competitor of OpenAI’s ChatGPT — which has been integrated as a tool used by many on Musk’s social media platform. Grok ran amok on X on Tuesday, spouting antisemitic replies to user questions, which adds an element of curious timing to Yaccarino’s resignation.
Before concluding her resignation announcement, Yaccarino referred to X as a true “digital town square for all voices and the world’s most powerful culture signal.”
“We couldn’t have achieved that without the support of our users, business partners, and the most innovative team in the world,” Yaccarino said. “I’ll be cheering you all on as you continue to change the world. As always, I’ll see you on X.”
Yaccarino’s strong relationship with the advertising community Madison Avenue changed after she became CEO of X, during which time the social media platform “waged a high-profile lawsuit against a major advertising industry coalition and its members, alleging the group abused its influence over marketers and ad agencies to discriminate unfairly against X, prompting an ad boycott,” Axios points out.
X’s legal threats, however, also reportedly served as an attempt to force the online advertising industry into a reset amid a broader cultural shift that began to move away from heavily moderated speech following President Donald Trump’s landslide election victory in 2024.
Notably, Musk’s social media platform seemingly inspired other tech giants to follow suit.
Earlier this year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his company would be launching its own version of X’s Community Notes on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, letting the community-driven tool replace its biased left-wing “fact checking” system that was used to censor conservatives over the past decade.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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