CEO Linda Yaccarino and others at X (formerly Twitter) have repeatedly tried to boast that advertisers are returning to the platform, but a new Media Matters analysis tells a different story: Since Elon Musk took over the company, it has earned 42% less ad revenue and had 28% fewer individual monthly advertisers than before his leadership began. Additionally, in the 12 weeks of Yaccarino’s tenure as CEO, the majority of the company’s top 100 advertisers pre-Musk spent a fraction of what they did in the 12 weeks prior to Musk’s acquisition. For example, Visa — which Yaccarino cited as an example of a “returning” advertiser — has spent just $10 in the past 12 weeks, compared to roughly $77,500 in the 12 weeks before Musk bought Twitter.
I saw video of her being interviewed on stage at a conference and she seems just as weird and psychologically unhealthy as Musk. Smug and condescending while narcissistically unable to acknowledge unpleasant realities that every single person knows are true. I think I’m mostly talking about style here. All big CEO-types would lay off thousands of good humans who are hard workers in a heartbeat to make their rich investors more money, but some manage to do it without the delivery of a shitposting bond villain. Watching her answer questions for 5 minutes made my skin crawl.
When Musk said it would be difficult to find somebody crazy enough to take the job, he wasn’t lying, for once.