The CEO who never was: how Linda Yaccarino was set up to fail at Elon Musk's X

The Guardian

10-07-2025

In May 2023, when Linda Yaccarino, an NBC advertising executive, joined what was then still known as Twitter, she was given a tall order: repair the company's relationship with advertisers after a chaotic year of being owned by Elon Musk. But just weeks after she became CEO, Musk posted an antisemitic tweet that drove away major brands such as Disney, Paramount, NBCUniversal, Comcast, Lionsgate and Warner Bros Discovery to pause their advertising on the platform. Musk delivered an apology for the tweet later at a conference – which he called the worst post he's ever done – but it came with a message to advertisers, specifically the Disney CEO Bob Iger: 'Go fuck yourselves.' Yaccarino was in the audience of the conference.
'I don't want them to advertise,' he said. 'If someone is going to blackmail me with advertising or money, go fuck yourself. Go. Fuck. Yourself,' he said. 'Is that clear? Hey Bob, if you're in the audience, that's how I feel.'
In the two years since, Yaccarino has had to contend with the unpredictability of Musk, ongoing content moderation and hate speech issues on the platform, increasingly strained relationships with advertisers and widespread backlash her boss received for his role in Donald Trump's administration. Her response in some cases was to remain silent; in others, she chose to defend the company. Through it all, however, experts say it was clear Yaccarino was the chief executive in title only.
'The reality is that Elon Musk is and always has been at the helm of X,' said Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester VP. 'It was clear from the start that she was being set up to fail by a limited scope as the company's chief executive. Her background and actual authority positioned her more as the company's chief advertising officer, rather than its CEO.'
Even in her de facto role as a chief advertising officer, Musk's incessant posting, impulsive decision making and obsession with X and other platforms becoming too 'woke' posed huge obstacles for Yaccarino.
'The only thing that's surprising about Linda Yaccarino's resignation is that it didn't come sooner,' said Proulx.
This week alone, Grok, the AI chatbot integrated with X, posted several antisemitic remarks, including some praising Hitler, after the company included new guidelines for the chatbot. In guidelines xAI published, Grok had been instructed not to 'shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated'. xAI removed that guideline from its code on Tuesday evening.
Yaccarino's tenure as CEO of X was not only bookended with antisemitism scandals – Musk's and Grok's offensive tweets – but was also punctuated with several accusations of antisemitism against her boss throughout her short stint. In 2023, the non-profit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate published a report on the prevalence of hate speech, both antisemitic and otherwise, on X as well as the lack of moderation. The company's response was to sue the organization; the suit was ultimately dismissed. Similarly, the non-profit Media Matters for America highlighted the appearance of pro-Nazi tweets alongside branded advertisements in a report that preceded a mass advertiser exodus from the social network. X sued Media Matters.
Most notably, Musk was accused of doing back-to-back Nazi salutes at a Trump inauguration rally at the start of 2025. Musk brushed aside the allegations that it was a Nazi salute and posted several Nazi puns on X. At the time, Yaccarino provided no additional comment, but posted a laughing face emoji in response to Musk's jokes. Musk's salute and the ensuing backlash was one of several moments that solidified the overall rightward shift of the social network as droves of users began to flock to alternative platforms like Bluesky, and even Reddit communities began banning X links.
When Yaccarino joined X, she set about courting celebrities and partnerships to reinvigorate the social network's brand and repair relationships that Musk's contentious takeover had damaged. Musk had long talked of making X into an 'everything app' that would integrate payments, AI, messaging, livestreaming and other new features alongside the social network's public posting, another task given to Yaccarino.
Yaccarino led a delegation of executives, including Musk himself, to meet with industry leaders at the Cannes Lions festival in 2023, and began seeking media figures who could feature on the platform.
Sign up to TechScape
A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives
after newsletter promotion
One of Yaccarino's moves toward making the platform into what she described as a 'global town square' was reaching out to the former CNN host Don Lemon to start a show on X, much as the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson had agreed to put his content on site. Lemon's first interview for the platform was with Musk, in what was intended to be a showcase of how X was shifting and bringing in big-name creators. The plan backfired after Lemon's interview with Musk grew heated over questions about the billionaire's drug use, which was quickly followed by Musk telling Lemon's agent that his contract was canceled. Future shows with big-name creators never materialized.
In the ensuing two years, rather than become a destination for mainstream talent, a streaming powerhouse or the 'everything app' that Yaccarino promoted, X has largely become a megaphone for Musk to air his grievances, boost and then feud with Trump, and promote his companies. Far-right influencers, porn spambots and meme accounts proliferate, while many media outlets have deprioritized the platform or left it altogether. Misinformation and extremism are rampant, sometimes coming from Musk himself.
The day before Yaccarino resigned, X became involved in a scandal that epitomized much of what the platform has become. Musk had recently posted that he would be reconfiguring xAI's chatbot, Grok, because he did not agree with the responses it was generating. On Tuesday, users noticed that the chatbot had begun to reply to queries with blatantly antisemitic posts praising Nazi ideology. A flood of users began posting more screenshots of Grok posting rape fantasies, identifying itself as 'MechaHitler' and promoting conspiracies before the company removed the posts.
Incidents like Grok's foray into Nazism are some of the many reasons Yaccarino's goal of revitalizing X has sputtered. Although she succeeded in courting a number of major companies to begin advertising again last year, at a time when Musk's connections to the White House were strongest, the platform's ad revenues have never reached anywhere near their pre-Musk levels, according to the research firm Emarketer. The platform also resorted to threats of lawsuits against major companies such as Verizon if they did not buy advertising on the site, according to a Wall Street Journal report that Yaccarino has denied.
After more than two years of Yaccarino running damage control for her boss and the platform's myriad issues, Musk issued only a brief statement acknowledging she was stepping down.
'Thank you for your contributions,' Musk responded to Yaccarino's post announcing her resignation. Minutes later, he began sending replies to other posts about SpaceX, artificial intelligence and how his chatbot became a Nazi.