Commentary
On May 12, 2023, Elon Musk announced that Linda Yaccarino, the now former chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, would become the new CEO of Twitter. Musk’s appointment of Yaccarino followed an advertiser exodus that caused Twitter’s ad revenue to plummet by more than 60 percent from October 2022 through Jan. 25, 2022, from around $127 million to just over $48 million. According to Pathmatics, by Sensor Tower, more than half of Twitter’s thousand advertisers pulled their ads from Twitter after Musk’s takeover of the social media company.
The flight of advertisers was due to concerns about Twitter’s content moderation and Musk’s so-called free-speech advocacy. In short, Musk’s supposed free-speech absolutism and his subsequent renunciation of the Democratic Party as “the party of division and hate” put Musk and Twitter squarely in the crosshairs of the establishment and its woke cartel. Yaccarino’s appointment represents Musk’s attempt to appease this seemingly all-powerful contingent. But the Yaccarino hire has no doubt damaged Musk’s reputation as a free speech advocate and dashed many hopes for Twitter as an open forum….