(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Elon Musk confirmed Friday that the new CEO for Twitter will be NBCUniversal’s Linda Yaccarino, sparking backlash among free-speech advocates who worry about Yaccarino’s pro-censorship views and her ties to the globalist World Economic Forum.
“I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!” Musk wrote in a Friday tweet. He added that Yaccarino “will focus primarily on business operations” while Musk will stay closely connected to product design and new technology.
Before that announcement, NBCUniversal said Friday that Yaccarino would step down immediately as chairwoman for global advertising and partnerships.
Musk, who bought Twitter last fall and has been running it since, has long insisted that he would step down as top executive at the company, which is now called X Corp.
As noted recently by the Discern Report, Yaccarino’s globalist ties run deep.
“In her LinkedIn profile, Yaccarino notes that she’s been a WEF Executive Chair since January 2019. Currently, she’s the Chairman of the WEF’s Taskforce on Future of Work. She also sits on the WEF’s Media, Entertainment, and Culture Industry Governors Steering Committee. Additionally, she is highly engaged with the WEF’s Value in Media initiative,” the Discern Report noted Friday.
“Yaccarino has spoken at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting about shaping the future of media, entertainment, and culture.”
Yaccarino’s pro-censorship views were made clear during an interview she conducted with Musk at an advertising conference last month.
“[Advertisers] need to feel that there is an opportunity for them to influence what you’re building … moderation—that’s what the influence is,” she said.
Musk pushed back during the interview, telling her that he’d “be warry” about giving advertisers the ability to influence content-moderation decisions at Twitter.
“It is not cool to try to say what Twitter will do,” Musk said. “And if that means losing advertising dollars, we lose it. But freedom of speech is paramount.”
However, Musk hiring Yaccarino have many worried that he’s backtracking on his promise of a free-speech platform.
Elon Musk … the woke mind virus is a threat to the world.
Also Elon Musk … I just hired a far left loon deeply infected with the woke mind virus to run Twitter.
Twitter 2.0 was fun while it lasted – get ready for it to suck again.
— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) May 12, 2023
Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino is a social justice warrior. This is going to be a disaster.
She's already pandering to liberal ideology… pic.twitter.com/lH5PC0K17w
— Timothy P (@Timtravels007) May 12, 2023
Others still expect Musk to retain much of his decision-making power at Twitter.
“While he’s stepping back from the CEO title, Musk is far from likely to step back from calling the product shots,” said Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester Research.
Shares of Tesla rose about 2% Thursday after Musk made the announcement. Shareholders of the electric car company have been concerned about how much of his attention is being spent on Twitter.
Last November, Musk was questioned in court about how he splits his time among Tesla and his other companies, including SpaceX and Twitter. Musk had to testify in the trial in Delaware’s Court of Chancery over a shareholder’s challenge to his potentially $55 billion compensation plan as CEO of the electric car company.
Bantering with Twitter followers late last year, Musk expressed pessimism about the prospects for a new CEO, saying that person “must like pain a lot” to run a company that “has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy.”
“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted at the time.
The Associated Press contributed to this story
