Yaccarino led the social media platform through a tumultuous period as Musk remade Twitter in his vision — which included loosening content rules and reinstating previously banned accounts that spread misinformation and conspiracy theories. Musk himself frequently used his platform, which he renamed X, to spread falsehoods and post about his own right-wing political views on issues such as immigration and crime.
During the 2024 election campaign, the billionaire leveraged the platform to promote Donald Trump, then also used it as a vehicle to tout the controversial budget cuts and layoffs he was spearheading at the U.S. DOGE Service once Trump took office. In the past month, Musk took to X to air his grievances about the president and his signature tax and spending bill, culminating in a public falling out between the two.
“When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company,” Yaccarino said in her Wednesday post. “I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”
In March, Musk said he sold his social media company to xAI, his artificial intelligence start-up, which runs its chatbot Grok. Musk has described Grok as unfiltered and dedicated to “rigorous pursuit of the truth,” a contrast to other companies’ chatbots, which he says are trained on politically correct sources.
Grok has produced a flood of offensive responses recently, days after Musk touted updates that would train it on information that is “politically incorrect, but nonetheless factually true.” The offensive and antisemitic comments this week have alarmed users and leaders around the world.
