Jacob Kastrenakes
Here’s one of the oddest moments of the Linda Yaccarino interview.
Julia Boorstin asked her to confirm that X would start charging users to post, as Musk floated a week ago. Yaccarino was not so sure:
Jacob Kastrenakes
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Executive Editor
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Jacob Kastrenakes
That’s it for the Code Conference 2023!
We’ll have a few more videos to share as we wrap things up, so check back in for some of the key moments. And if you want all the details, read back through our StoryStream below.
Jacob Kastrenakes
And we’re wrapped.
There was a recurring theme to Yaccarino’s answers: she keeps defending X from statements and choices by Elon Musk.
Harassment of Yoel Roth? Linked to Musk. Advertisers fleeing the platform because of chaotic moderation decisions before she was hired? Musk. A dispute with a well-regarded nonprofit combatting anti-Semitism? Musk.
She’s surprisingly good at diffusing these questions, but you’d think that X would want to talk about literally anything other problems caused by Musk.
Jacob Kastrenakes
Yaccarino disputed a report that X was disassembling its election integrity team.
She didn’t dispute that some members of the team had been fired, but she said X is expanding its work to combat platform manipulation and disinformation overall.
“It’s an issue we take very seriously,” she said. “And contrary to the comments that were made, there is a robust and growing team at X that is wrapping their arms around election integrity.”
Jacob Kastrenakes
The clock was up on Yaccarino’s interview a few questions ago, but they’re still going.
Boorstin is trying to squeeze in a last couple of questions before they wrap up.
Jacob Kastrenakes
“I wish that would be different. We’re looking into that,”
Yaccarino says in response to the dispute between Musk and the Anti-Defamation League.
I think the implication is that she wishes the ADL — a nonprofit focused on combating anti-Semitism — would stop criticizing X for its moderation problems and calling on advertisers to abandon the platform.
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt “continues to question the progress as it relates to anti-Semitism,” Yaccarino says. “It is disappointing that there is not equal time given to all the progress.”
Jacob Kastrenakes
The exchange on X’s subscription requirement was a weird one.
When Boorstin asked about how the plan would impact X usage, Yaccarino asked her to clarify.
“Did he say we were moving to it specifically, or did he say that’s the plan?” she asked
Boorstin pushed her on whether they’d discussed it first. “We talk about everything,” she said. But the exchange does not, exactly, have me convinced.
Jacob Kastrenakes
X now has 200-250 million daily active users. Maybe?
“Something like that,” Yaccarino said on stage. She pulled out her phone like she was going to double check the number, then got sidetracked by a long answer.
Later, she threw out as examples 540 million monthly active users and 225 million daily active users without quite committing to them being real figures.
Jacob Kastrenakes
Yaccarino was dismissive of Roth’s concerns about death threats, too.
Roth said his advice to her was to think about the risks of working with Musk and “what she might face.”
To Yaccarino, having safety concerns comes with the territory of being a CEO. “I feel great. I’m well protected,” she said. Yaccarino said she appreciated his concerns. “I think that’s just a human emotion when you get thrust into such a public spotlight.”
Jacob Kastrenakes
Yaccarino responds to Yoel Roth: “I work at X, he worked at Twitter.”
The house is packed right now for Yaccarino’s interview, particularly after the surprise of Roth’s appearance. She opens the conversation with a response to Roth, saying that his Twitter was “operating on a different sets of rules ... ideologies that were creeping down the road of censorship.”
She doesn’t exactly engage with Roth’s assertion that X is doing less to stop harassment on the platform.
“It’s a new day at X,” Yaccarino said. “And I’ll leave it at that.”
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