Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So Mike Dubuski's joining US now ABC News Technology reporter.
The CEO of X is stepping down, and Mike, welcome
to the show. So what's doing here with this?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, Linda Yakarino is stepping down. She's the CEO of X,
of course, the platform formerly known as Twitter. She joined
this platform back in twenty twenty three, guys, and she
came over from NBC Universal, where she handled advertising partnerships
for that company. She was pretty well respected in this field,
and her goal at X was to bring advertisers back
(00:33):
to the platform. This was during a time when advertisers
were leaving X in Drove, among them Apple and General Motors.
They were leaving because Elon Musk's vision for the company
a year after he purchased it was to make it
a haven for free speech, where content moderation was very
light and conversation, even if it was controversial, could flourish. However,
(00:57):
as we've seen across the social media space, whenever you
roll back content moderation guidelines, inevitably a lot of toxic
content will roll in. Slurs against black people more than
doubled on the platform around that time, slurs against gay
men and anti Semitic posts also jumped significantly around that time,
and that makes brands companies uncomfortable. They don't want their
(01:20):
advertising appearing in the same feed, right next to that
sort of incendiary content. It's worth noting in the years since,
many of those advertisers have returned to X, especially in
the last year given how close Elon Musk has gotten
with President Trump. Of course that's a little bit of
a different story right now, but many of those advertisers
have returned. And now Linda Yakarino says that she is
(01:42):
stepping away from the platform, that she's proud of the
ex team, that X is truly a digital town square,
and Elon Musk has weighed in replying to her post
on the platform saying simply thank you for your contributions.
He has not made any announcements about the future of
the CEO role at X, so.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
She's not really indicating exactly why she's leaving, correct. I mean,
it's two years in you would think, and I don't
know how old she is, but she doesn't appear to
be very old. So it's a bit of a head
scratcher as to you know, why is she stepping down?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I'll give you the macro and the micro answer to that,
and this is all just stuff that's happening in the
world around X right now. The macro is that many
people see Linda Yakarino largely as a sort of ceremonial
figure at X. The guy who's really calling the shots
is Elon Musk, right, And you look, even in her
(02:38):
goodbye post, she calls out some of the things that
have happened during her tenure at this platform. One of
them was community notes, of course, the notes that appear
next to certain posts on the platform at context. That
was the directive on the behalf of Elon Musk. Right.
Elon Musk is the guy who often, you know, would
(02:58):
counter what what Yakarino was saying, even live right to advertisers. Right,
There's several years ago Linda Yakarino was at an event.
Elon Musk was at another event, being interviewed by The
New York Times, and he said, two advertisers, go f yourself, essentially, right.
He was angry at the sort of exodus of advertisers
(03:22):
on the platform, and Yakarino had to sort of do
damage control. She had to clean all that up. I
was talking to another person, Chris Stokal, Walker's an author
and technology journalists, and he said something I thought really
resonated with me, helped me add context to this situation,
which is that this story is both hugely important and
not important at all. Right, Lindi Akarino is a CEO
(03:43):
of one of the most prominent social media platforms in
the country. She's leaving that job. But it's also not
important because she was never really in charge to begin
with Elon Musk at the end of the day, with
the Nypolon strings.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
So there it is. She's basically just a symbolic figure,
ceremonial figure, if you will. And so based on that
the way that it's that's interesting and it does make
a lot of sense. But you know, you would also
think as as somebody like him, he's so hands on
that Yeah, he's just not going to relinquish and go, hey,
just do whatever you want. It's my company, but do
(04:16):
whatever you want, you know, especially given you know where
it came from and how you know it's been. Yeah,
it's been pretty volatile. Clearly if you go back to
when who was it Jack? I think who was yeah Dorsey?
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Back when I mean you go from one extreme to
the other with regard to the content and all of that.
So I guess really that's a that's a really good
interesting point too, with her going well, I mean, how
much control did she really have? Kind of a thing.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
So, and of course, the the micro of this, guys
is the last few days with the AI chatbot that
is integrated into x It's called Grock. It recently begins
viewing a number of anti semitic posts on the platform.
They've since had to cheat the code of that chat
bot and roll back a lot of the changes that
(05:05):
were being made to make that chatbot more politically incorrect.
Was kind of the directive from Elon Musk. It seems like, uh,
it seems like a fine time for Linda Yacarino to go,
because I can't imagine anyone would want to really deal
with that. But it's it's, you know, a pretty thankless
job at the end of the day, right, She's kind
of found herself, you know, with the impossible task of
(05:27):
trying to appeal to advertisers while at the same time,
you know, running a company that is bought and and
run by a man who who kind of wants these
conversations happening, wants this free speech idea to reign free.
But you know, at the end of the day, it's
a private company. It needs to make money. So that's
that's that's how you know, the cookies grumbles, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Mike Dubusky, ABC News Technology reporter, thanks for the latest
on this. Appreciate you man, of course.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Guys, take care, right, We'll see you.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
And after that, Free Speech had to rework the Grock
code though I'm I'm like, okay, what code was mistakenly
put in that has the AI making anti semitic or
racist remarks in the first place? Yeah, bizarre, that's very strange. Yeah,
very much.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yep.
So Mike Dubuski's joining US now ABC News Technology reporter.
The CEO of X is stepping down, and Mike, welcome
to the show. So what's doing here with this?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, Linda Yakarino is stepping down. She's the CEO of X,
of course, the platform formerly known as Twitter. She joined
this platform back in twenty twenty three, guys, and she
came over from NBC Universal, where she handled advertising partnerships
for that company. She was pretty well respected in this field,
and her goal at X was to bring advertisers back
(00:33):
to the platform. This was during a time when advertisers
were leaving X in Drove, among them Apple and General Motors.
They were leaving because Elon Musk's vision for the company
a year after he purchased it was to make it
a haven for free speech, where content moderation was very
light and conversation, even if it was controversial, could flourish. However,
(00:57):
as we've seen across the social media space, whenever you
roll back content moderation guidelines, inevitably a lot of toxic
content will roll in. Slurs against black people more than
doubled on the platform around that time, slurs against gay
men and anti Semitic posts also jumped significantly around that time,
and that makes brands companies uncomfortable. They don't want their
(01:20):
advertising appearing in the same feed, right next to that
sort of incendiary content. It's worth noting in the years since,
many of those advertisers have returned to X, especially in
the last year given how close Elon Musk has gotten
with President Trump. Of course that's a little bit of
a different story right now, but many of those advertisers
have returned. And now Linda Yakarino says that she is
(01:42):
stepping away from the platform, that she's proud of the
ex team, that X is truly a digital town square,
and Elon Musk has weighed in replying to her post
on the platform saying simply thank you for your contributions.
He has not made any announcements about the future of
the CEO role at X, so.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
She's not really indicating exactly why she's leaving, correct. I mean,
it's two years in you would think, and I don't
know how old she is, but she doesn't appear to
be very old. So it's a bit of a head
scratcher as to you know, why is she stepping down?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I'll give you the macro and the micro answer to that,
and this is all just stuff that's happening in the
world around X right now. The macro is that many
people see Linda Yakarino largely as a sort of ceremonial
figure at X. The guy who's really calling the shots
is Elon Musk, right, And you look, even in her
(02:38):
goodbye post, she calls out some of the things that
have happened during her tenure at this platform. One of
them was community notes, of course, the notes that appear
next to certain posts on the platform at context. That
was the directive on the behalf of Elon Musk. Right.
Elon Musk is the guy who often, you know, would
(02:58):
counter what what Yakarino was saying, even live right to advertisers. Right,
There's several years ago Linda Yakarino was at an event.
Elon Musk was at another event, being interviewed by The
New York Times, and he said, two advertisers, go f yourself, essentially, right.
He was angry at the sort of exodus of advertisers
(03:22):
on the platform, and Yakarino had to sort of do
damage control. She had to clean all that up. I
was talking to another person, Chris Stokal, Walker's an author
and technology journalists, and he said something I thought really
resonated with me, helped me add context to this situation,
which is that this story is both hugely important and
not important at all. Right, Lindi Akarino is a CEO
(03:43):
of one of the most prominent social media platforms in
the country. She's leaving that job. But it's also not
important because she was never really in charge to begin
with Elon Musk at the end of the day, with
the Nypolon strings.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
So there it is. She's basically just a symbolic figure,
ceremonial figure, if you will. And so based on that
the way that it's that's interesting and it does make
a lot of sense. But you know, you would also
think as as somebody like him, he's so hands on
that Yeah, he's just not going to relinquish and go, hey,
just do whatever you want. It's my company, but do
(04:16):
whatever you want, you know, especially given you know where
it came from and how you know it's been. Yeah,
it's been pretty volatile. Clearly if you go back to
when who was it Jack? I think who was yeah Dorsey?
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Back when I mean you go from one extreme to
the other with regard to the content and all of that.
So I guess really that's a that's a really good
interesting point too, with her going well, I mean, how
much control did she really have? Kind of a thing.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
So, and of course, the the micro of this, guys
is the last few days with the AI chatbot that
is integrated into x It's called Grock. It recently begins
viewing a number of anti semitic posts on the platform.
They've since had to cheat the code of that chat
bot and roll back a lot of the changes that
(05:05):
were being made to make that chatbot more politically incorrect.
Was kind of the directive from Elon Musk. It seems like, uh,
it seems like a fine time for Linda Yacarino to go,
because I can't imagine anyone would want to really deal
with that. But it's it's, you know, a pretty thankless
job at the end of the day, right, She's kind
of found herself, you know, with the impossible task of
(05:27):
trying to appeal to advertisers while at the same time,
you know, running a company that is bought and and
run by a man who who kind of wants these
conversations happening, wants this free speech idea to reign free.
But you know, at the end of the day, it's
a private company. It needs to make money. So that's
that's that's how you know, the cookies grumbles, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Mike Dubusky, ABC News Technology reporter, thanks for the latest
on this. Appreciate you man, of course.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Guys, take care, right, We'll see you.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
And after that, Free Speech had to rework the Grock
code though I'm I'm like, okay, what code was mistakenly
put in that has the AI making anti semitic or
racist remarks in the first place? Yeah, bizarre, that's very strange. Yeah,
very much.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yep.
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