Linda Yaccarino resigned as CEO of X on Wednesday, declaring victory in implementing Elon Musk’s imaginative and prescient for the platform.
“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,” she wrote.
Defending “free speech” for Nazis has actually been vital to Musk, as his personal AI chatbot has fondly confirmed—actually the day earlier than Yaccarino’s resignation. However he actually doesn’t imagine within the free speech of corporations that don’t need to promote on a Nazi-enabling platform, suing them for pulling their promoting. And let’s not overlook Musk’s blocking of hyperlinks to rivals like Mastodon and different social media websites.
Elon Musk within the Oval Workplace with President Donald Trump
Whether or not the corporate has “turned around” is debatable, and there actually are no clear financials to assist that declare. X touted a win after elevating $1 billion in new financing at a $32 billion valuation—down from the $44 billion that Musk paid for it.
Whereas that was greater than analysts anticipated, a lot of the bump coincided with Musk’s bromance with President Donald Trump and his rising affect within the administration. “Investments” in Trumpworld have a method of getting inflated by these in search of entry and favors from corrupt oligarch overlords.
However we do know that the platform is hemorrhaging customers. In accordance with Similarweb, X had 388.5 million cellular customers when Yaccarino took the job in June 2023. As of final month? It’s right down to 311.1 million. That’s a lack of greater than 75 million customers—a 20% decline. In different phrases, 1 in 5 customers has bailed.
Then there’s Yaccarino’s ultimate declare, that she remodeled X into “the Everything App.” Which is humorous as a result of … she didn’t.
This refers to Musk’s repeated need to show X right into a U.S. model of China’s WeChat.
“In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world,” he wrote on X in July 2023, a month after hiring Yaccarino. That was two years in the past.
In accordance with The Guardian, WeChat is so outstanding in China that it’s practically inconceivable to navigate with out it. The app, owned by the Chinese language tech big Tencent, is used for messaging, social media, funds, subscriptions, utility payments, meals deliveries, transportation tickets, ride-sharing companies, and extra.
Against this, X stays … X. The identical poisonous cesspool, now with a Nazi AI hooked up. It’s not an excellent app with monetary instruments and killer options. It’s simply empty guarantees, consumer loss, and authorized drama.
So what, precisely, did Yaccarino remodel?
Even Musk didn’t trouble pretending to care about her resignation, merely responding with a frosty, “Thank you for your contributions.”
Then he moved on to posting about the whole lot else besides her.
