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Musk Hires Linda Yaccarino as New Twitter CEO

Victor Westerkamp
Victor resides in the Netherlands and writes about freedom and governmental and social changes to the democratic form of nations.
Published: May 16, 2023
linda-yaccarino-the-by-elon-musk-newly-appointed-twitter-ceo-attends-legends-ball-2022-bravo-con-at-manhattan-center-on-october-14-2022-in-new-york-city
Linda Yaccarino attends 'Legends Ball 2022 BravoCon' at Manhattan Center on October 14, 2022, in New York City. Yaccarino will take on the lead of Elon Musk’s acquired social media platform Twitter in an apparent attempt to regain advertisers’ confidence and lead the company back to its role as a ‘trusted’ source of information. (Image: SANTIAGO FELIPE/Getty Images)

Elon Musk appointed former NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new CEO to retrieve fleeing investors who disliked the freedom of speech direction its multi-faceted leader headed.

On May 12, Musk said the current NBCUniversal executive would take over Twitter, which has been in heavy weather due to advertisers leaving the nearly shipwrecked social media platform, pundits say.

“I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!” Musk said in a tweet on Friday, May 12. “@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations while I focus on product design & new technology,” he added.

Yaccarino is ubiquitously tipped as the ideal candidate to sink her teeth into Twitter’s hefty debt load after she spent several years streamlining the advertising business at NBCUniversal, which Comcast Corp owns.

Swaying the axe

The billionaire’s first two weeks as Twitter’s owner in October saw a dramatic series of events. Musk quickly sacked its former top executive team, including its CEO, Parag Agrawal, and laid off half its staff in November.

Musk earlier this year acknowledged that Twitter suffered a considerable decline in ad revenue. But probably more concerning for the sponsors’ businesses was Musk’s avowed devotion to transforming the platform into a beacon of free speech, worried that their ads could appear next to “inappropriate” content after the company lost nearly 80 percent of its staff, analysts say.

“Inappropriate content” refers to the content of several controversial influencers who spoke out against the official narrative on the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. stance in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, or the prevalence of woke culture — to name a few — like former President Donald Trump and vaccine critic Dr. Robert Malone whose Twitter accounts have been reinstated by Musk, after a period of involuntary hibernation.

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Musk proclaimed himself a “free speech absolutist” and asserted to have bought the platform to prevent it from becoming an “echo chamber for hate and division.” At the same time, he suspended users with whom he disagreed.

Musk also made many changes to its policies and strategy and launched a subscription product, Twitter Blue, to diversify away from ads. 

The subscription feature costs users $8 per month to verify their accounts. However, the product has had limited success, not least because it allowed scammers to impersonate influential brands, all of which have chased investors away from spending on the platform.

‘Deep bench of relationships’

But while Musk said Yaccarino would help build an “everything app,” a service he has previously peddled that would facilitate peer-to-peer payments, but that, according to critics by the same token, could be used to usher in the feared social credit system, his choice for Yaccarino, the cunning advertising veteran signaled that in the end, he will still serve the interests of his investors.

“Twitter needs credibility with the advertising community,” Greg Kahn, chief executive of GK Digital Ventures media consultancy, told Reuters reporters. “Linda has demonstrated her trust, innovative nature of bringing new partners to the table, and a deep bench of relationships.”

What this “deep bench of relationships” encompasses is not sure. Still, the fact remains that Yaccarino is on board with the World Economic Forum (WEF), the globalist think tank which has successfully infiltrated nearly all of the world’s governments and is not particularly known for its inclination to freedom of speech.

And with Yaccarino, herself as an outspoken proponent of vaccines and mask-wearing, it is very likely she will not tolerate any further deviation from the beaten mainstream road of information and will try to reshape Twitter into what it intended for, a mouthpiece for the established approved opinions with no room for dissenting voices. 

Reuters contributed to this report.