Linda Yaccarino has announced her departure from X, less than two years after becoming the social media company’s chief executive.
In a post on X, Yaccarino highlights her prior responsibilities at the company, including “protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”
In addition, the former executive says she and her colleagues at X worked to protect children on the platform, while also launching the controversial user-generated content-moderation feature, Community Notes, as well as X Money, the company’s future payments arm.
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As she departs from her position at X, Yaccarino insists the platform is entering “a new chapter” with the addition of xAI, X owner Elon Musk’s privately held start-up, which bought the social media company this past March.
During Yaccarino’s time as CEO, Musk reduced the company’s workforce by 75%, upended the platform’s safety restrictions, ushered in a politicized agenda, prioritized original short-form video series, changed the platform’s name, developed the Grok AI chatbot, and stoked tensions with advertisers.
Yaccarino — a longtime advertising head at NBCUniversal — was entrusted to repair X’s contentious relationship with major brands.
However, Yaccarino also led a high-profile lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) for triggering a “massive advertiser boycott” that allegedly cost the company billions in ad revenue. Shortly after, GARM discontinued operations.
Despite the lawsuit and Musk telling advertisers to “go f*** yourselves,” brands eventually began returning to the platform, especially after President Donald Trump’s election win.
Shortly after Trump was re-elected as president, Yaccarino stated that over 96% of X’s top brand advertisers had returned to the platform.
X has not yet named Yaccarino’s successor.
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