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
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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.”
Jacob Kastrenakes
X CEO Linda Yaccarino is here.
She’s speaking with CNBC senior media and tech correspondent Julia Boorstin.
There’s a lot to discuss — for one, the ongoing chaos of working with Elon Musk and transforming Twitter into X. But also, two events just today.
Twitter’s former trust and safety leader, Yoel Roth, was on stage less than an hour ago discussing how Musk sent harassment his way. Also today, Media Matters came out with a report about X placing NFL ads on accounts of white nationalists. That’s a big ding in Yaccarino’s promise that X is brand safe.
Jacob Kastrenakes
We’ll be back in 15 minutes with X CEO Linda Yaccarino.
She’ll wrap up Code Conference 2023. See you then.
Jacob Kastrenakes
Adobe is “diversifying” its GPU selection.
Verge EIC Nilay Patel asked whether the company is as “dependent on Nvidia as everybody else.” Adobe’s Still didn’t answer the question directly, but she suggested the company needs more than one GPU partner.
“I would say we’re certainly using a lot of GPU server capacity,” she says. Of course, “Nvidia’s a great partner,” she caveats.
Jacob Kastrenakes
Roth’s advice to Twitter’s new leaders?
To CEO Linda Yaccarino: “Look at what your boss did to me,” he says, referring to Musk’s tweets opening him up to death threats. “I hope she is thinking about what those risks are and what she might face.
To Musk: “There are still people within Twitter who care about the platform, who care about making thoughtful, principled, data-backed decisions for Twitter’s users. Listen to them, give them space, don’t overrule them.”