Linda Yaccarin has made the surprise announcement that she is stepping down from her position as CEO of X.
Having been the head of Elon Musk’s social media platform for two years, Yaccarin has not given any reason for her decision to leave. However, her announcement comes after xAI’s Grok chatbot spewed out a series of antisemitic content.
News of Yaccarin’s plans to step down came in a post on X. Although she wrote at some length, it garnered on a terse “Thank you for your contributions” from Elon Musk.
In her post, Yaccarin says:
After two incredible years, I’ve decided to step down as CEO of X.
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.
I’m incredibly proud of the X team – the historic business turn around we have accomplished together has been nothing short of remarkable.
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.
X is truly a 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. I’ll be cheering you all on as you continue to change the world.
As always, I’ll see you on X
There is speculation that the move comes as Elon Musk’s relationship with Donald Trump disintegrated, and create a new political party called the America Party. But there are many other factors to consider. Despite holding the title of CEO, many saw Yaccarin’s role as little more than a label, with Musk remaining firmly in charge of operations.
The Wall Street Journal reports that it was a good time to leave X because of the return of certain avdertisers, and the merger of X and xAI. For Musk xAI is an important component of his vision of X being an everything app, and Yaccarin’s place within this future has been unclear for some time.
Much of her job had involved trying to help ruptured relationships caused by Musk. The BBC quotes Emarketer vice president Jasmine Enberg as saying:
Faced with a mercurial owner who never fully stepped away from the helm and continued to use the platform as his personal megaphone, Yaccarino had to try to run the business while also regularly putting out fires. The reasons for X’s ad recovery are complicated, and Yaccarino was unable to restore the platform’s reputation among advertisers.
At this stage, no replacement CEO has been announced and, although there are various potential candidates, there is no one who particularly stands out as being likely.
Image credit: Olena Churilova / Dreamstime.com
