Live data from Hacker News

Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

nytimes.com

21–30 of 1001 posts

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#23

One time they let her speak publicly it turned out to be a disaster. She never had any say and worst part is she was not even a good fall guy, it was clear who’s pulling the strings. The most immaterial and inconsequential hire ever. I love all the replies on Twitter thanking her but during her time the valuation dropped 80% and they were suing advertisers for not advertising. Remarkably inept.

You’re saying two things:

- she is inept

- she never had any say (which I interpret, perhaps incorrectly, that she is competent but had her hands were tied)

Which is it?

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#25
Have any of the people who noisily joined X to make a big impact fast actually had a big impact over any time frame? Remember when G. Hotz said he was going to fix Twitter search in 6 weeks, and then it turned out that G. Hotz is just another midwit like anyone else and Twitter search is still as bad as ever? Yaccarino said they were going to transform Twitter into the "everything app" with payments, marketplaces, and even banking. None of which it turns out was within the abilities of Linda Yaccarino.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#26
post #5

I guess the Nazi chatbot was the last straw. Amazed she lasted this long, honestly.

Not defending Elon or the infobot but my theory is that by leaving that LLM unfiltered people have learned how to gamify and manipulate it into having a fascist slant. I could even guess which groups of people are doing it but I will let them take credit and it's not likely actual neo-nazi's, they are too dumb and on too many drugs to manipulate an infobot. These groups like to LARP to piss everyone off and they often succeed. If I am right it is a set of splintered groups formerly referred to generically as The Internet Hate Machine but they have (d)evolved into something worse that even 4chan could not tolerate.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#28
post #17
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grok, the xAI chatbot, went full neo-nazi yesterday: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/09/grok-ai-p...

[flagged]

... yes, that's the complaint. The prompt engineering they did made it spew neo-Nazi vitriol. They either did not adequately test it beforehand and didn't know what would happen, or they did test and knew the outcome—either way, it's bad.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#29

One time they let her speak publicly it turned out to be a disaster. She never had any say and worst part is she was not even a good fall guy, it was clear who’s pulling the strings. The most immaterial and inconsequential hire ever. I love all the replies on Twitter thanking her but during her time the valuation dropped 80% and they were suing advertisers for not advertising. Remarkably inept.

It's weird that you say both she had no material power and also seem to imply the valuation drop and lawsuits were due to her ineptitude?

Anyway she volunteered to be a puppet for a man who is clearly off the rails and her legacy will forever be stained.

Post reply on HN