Linda Yaccarino, the director general of X (formerly Twitter), announced this Wednesday her departure from the Elon Musk social platform, after two years in office.
This resignation comes in a context of strong turbulence for the company, raising many questions about the future of the platform and its ambitions.
A start in controversy for grok and latent tensions
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If Linda Yaccarino did not provide any explicit reason when he left, this announcement comes after a major controversy involving Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Xai, the Elon Musk company.
Anti -Semitic remarks and references to Hitler would have been generated by Grok in response to publications on floods in Texas. This incident highlights the contents of moderation of content with which X and XAI faces, especially since XAI merged with X last March, in a transaction valuing the company of IA at 80 billion dollars and the social platform at 33 billion dollars.
Sources close to the file, cited by NBC News, indicate that the departure of Ms. Yaccarino has been in preparation for more than a week, suggesting underlying tensions or strategic differences that could have precipitated this decision.
Freedom of expression against commercial imperatives
Handled by Elon Musk in May 2023, Linda Yaccarino’s main mission was to straighten X’s commercial operations, in particular by soothing advertisers scalded by drastic changes in content moderation policies under the Musk era.
Former leader of the world’s world advertising division of NBCUNIVERSAL, it was supposed to bring its expertise to reassure the market and revive advertising revenues, which have experienced a significant fall since the acquisition of Twitter by Musk for $ 44 billion.
However, the task proved to be arduous. Elon Musk’s sometimes provocative declarations, like his “Go make F___” “ Launched to advertisers during the Dealbook Summit 2023, Yaccarino’s efforts have complicated to reconstruct confidence. Despite this, she constantly defended Musk’s vision, describing X’s position as a “Explicit point of view on our position” and a platform allowing “People to make their own decisions”seeking to position X at the intersection of freedom of expression and the issues of « Main Street ».
The ambition of a “everything application”
The departure of Linda Yaccarino leaves a void at the head of X, while the platform aspires to become a « Everything App »like WeChat in China, integrating features going beyond simple communication.
This ambition is now intrinsically linked to the integration of artificial intelligence via XAI and Grok, which makes the challenges of moderation and confidence of users even more critical.
For companies and advertisers, this change of direction adds a new layer of uncertainty. The ability to X to attract and retain advertising budgets will be directly impacted by the stability of its management and its ability to guarantee a safe and predictable brand environment. For users, the question arises whether the company will manage to reconcile its commitment to an absolute freedom of expression with the need to fight against problematic content, a balance which is increasingly delicate to maintain.
