What is Linda Yaccarino's legacy? And what's next for X?

Linda Yaccarino never had an easy job at X. The social media platform's CEO was always overshadowed by its owner, Elon Musk, whose activities made it more difficult for her to lure advertisers. Now she's gone.

X may be the "world's largest and most politically relevant" real-time social media platform, but it faces an "uncertain future" in the wake of Yaccarino's "abrupt resignation" last week, said Axios. She left her job the day after X's AI chatbot, Grok, started "promoting antisemitic tropes and offensive language" that drew widespread condemnation. Yaccarino was originally brought into the company to "rehabilitate X's ad business," but Musk's "disdain for the ad business" made her job much more challenging. Meanwhile, X is "starting to face competition" from rivals like Threads, Meta's Twitter clone.

Yaccarino tried to make X a "global town square," said The Guardian. She courted talent like former CNN host Don Lemon to start shows on the platform, but Musk fired Lemon following a contentious interview. Instead of attracting "mainstream talent," X has "largely become a megaphone for Musk." And instead of attracting advertisers, X reportedly "resorted to threats of lawsuits" against companies that were reluctant to buy ads.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What did the commentators say?

Yaccarino's departure was "inevitable," Dave Lee said at Bloomberg. Even without Musk's activities or Grok's temporary transformation into "MechaHitler," she had many "moral and professional" reasons to leave. Most significant was her "clear absence from important decision-making" within X made her a "CEO without power or respect." Her resignation may be a sign of X's decline. The platform is "losing its political relevance" while being "more toxic for advertisers than ever." A CEO role meant to "cover Musk's rotten edges" instead "ended predictably."

She can "claim some successes," said The Economist. X's ad revenue was starting to grow again, though it "remains well below its pre-Musk level." And while the platform's audience has declined, it has not "collapsed as many predicted." X has achieved at least one of Musk's goals: The platform now airs a "broader range of views" than before his purchase. The Grok incident, however, proved the range to be a "little too wide."

What next?

It is "unclear" who might replace Yaccarino at X, said The Wall Street Journal. Musk appears to be unhappy with the company's progress. X's "user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we're barely breaking even," he reportedly said in a January email to employees. If Musk decides to replace Yaccarino, her successor "will have to have credibility with advertisers," said ad consultant Michael Kassan to the outlet.

Advertisers are "silent" after the Grok incident and Yaccarino's departure, said NBC News. The ex-CEO "kept brands' exodus from X from being worse," but it is unlikely they will want to return in the near future, especially not at the same levels as on Twitter during its pre-Musk years. The social media universe looks a lot different now. Ad buyers find it "more effective to spend on places like TikTok," said Brett House, the senior vice president of MediaRadar, a firm tracking digital advertising spending.