AP Technology Writer Matt O’Brien
X CEO Linda Yaccarino said he resigned two years after running Elon Musk’s social media platform.
Yaccarino posted a positive message on Wednesday about his tenure at the company previously known as Twitter, saying, “There’s no top yet as X enters a new chapter at Xai, an artificial intelligence company from Musk, the maker of Chatbot Grok.”
Musk responded to Yaccarino’s presentation in his own five-word statement on X: “Thank you for your contribution.”
“The surprising thing about Linda Jaccarino’s resignation is that it didn’t come early,” said Forester Research Director Mike Prucks. “From the start, it was clear that she was set up to fail to a limited extent as the company’s chief executive.”
The reality is that Proulx said Musk “is at the helm of X, and this is how he’s been the CEO of Linda X to be title-only, which puts him in a very tough position, especially for those with Linda talent.”
Musk hired veteran advertising executive Yaccarino in May 2023 after purchasing Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and cutting most of its staff. He said at the time that Yaccarino’s role was primarily focused on running the company’s business operations, with a focus on product design and new technologies. Before announcing her employment, Musk said that anyone who took over as CEO of the company “musked must love pain.”
In accepting the job, Jaccarino was taking on the challenge of spreading big brands on social media platforms after months of upheaval following the acquisition of masks. She also had to work in a role supporting the oversized persona of masks both inside and outside X.
“Being CEO of X has always been a tough job, and Jaccarino has continued his role longer than many expected. He faced the mercury owner who didn’t step completely out of Helm and continued to use the platform as a personal megaphone.
Yaccarino’s future at X became unclear earlier this year after Musk integrated his social media platform with his artificial intelligence company Xai. And the advertising issues haven’t subsided. Since the acquisition of Mask, many companies have returned to advertising spending, the platform’s main source of revenue, over concerns that a thinning of mask content restrictions will thrive hatred and toxic speeches.
Recently, Grok’s update flooded anti-Semitic commentary from this week’s chatbot, including praise from Adolf Hitler.
“We are aware of recent posts created by Grok and are actively working to remove inappropriate posts,” said the Grok account, which was posted on X, more specifically, on X.
Some experts have linked Grok’s actions to deliberate efforts to shape Grok as an alternative to chatbots like Openai’s ChatGpt and Google’s Gemini. In late June he invited X users to help train chatbots with their commentary, in a way that infuses racist reactions and conspiracy theories.
“Please reply to this post with divisive facts for @grok training,” Musk said in a June 21 post. “This means I’m politically wrong, but it’s still practically true.”
A similar instruction was later burned into Glock’s “prompt,” which told the chatbot “not to be embarrassed to assert that he was politically wrong.” That part of the instructions was later removed.
“For me, this has all the fingerprints of Elon’s involvement,” said Talia Ringer, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Jaccarino has not publicly commented on the latest hate speech controversy. She has been enthusiastically defending Mask’s approach, including lawsuits against media issues in the US liberal advocacy group over reports that claimed that major advertisers posts about X appear alongside content from neo-Nazi and white nationalists. This report has now prompted some advertisers to pause their activity on X.
Last year, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against X’s other nonprofit, the Center to counter digital hatred. This has recorded an increase in hate speech on the site since it was acquired by Musk.
X also relies on continuing legal disputes with major advertisers, including CVS, Mars, LEGO, Nestlé, Shell and Tyson Foods.
Enberg said, “To some extent, Jaccarino accomplished what she was hired.” Emarketer hopes X’s advertising business will return to growth in 2025 after it was more than half between 2022 and 2023 following the acquisition of Musk.
However, she said, “The reasons for X’s ad recovery are complicated and Yaccarino was unable to restore the reputation of the advertiser’s platform.”
Original issue: July 9, 2025, 11:10am EDT
