X CEO, Linda Yaccarino, steps down from social media platform

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FILE - Linda Yaccarino, chief executive officer of X Corp., at the VivaTech conference in Paris, France, on Friday, May 24, 2024. (Benjamin Girette/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of Elon Musk’s X, is stepping down after two years at the company. 

What they're saying:

"I’m incredibly proud of the X team - the historic business turn around we have accomplished together has been nothing short of remarkable," Yaccarino said on X.

The backstory:

Musk hired Yaccarino, a veteran ad executive, in May 2023 after buying Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and cutting most of its staff. He said at the time that Yaccarino’s role would be focused mainly on running the company’s business operations, leaving him to focus on product design and new technology. Before announcing her hiring, Musk said whoever took over as the company’s CEO " must like pain a lot."

In accepting the job, Yaccarino was taking on the challenge of getting big brands back to advertising on the social media platform after months of upheaval following Musk's takeover. She also had to work in a supporting role to Musk's outsized persona on and off of X as he loosened content moderation rules in the name of free speech and restored accounts previously banned by the social media platform.

Yaccarino's future at X became unclear earlier this year after Musk merged the social media platform with his artificial intelligence company, xAI. And the advertising issues have not subsided. Since Musk's takeover, a number of companies had pulled back on ad spending — the platform’s chief source of revenue — over concerns that Musk’s thinning of content restrictions was enabling hateful and toxic speech to flourish.