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Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

nytimes.com

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Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#581

Post by andrewflnr »

consumer451 wrote: post #448
andrewflnr wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His mistakes cost less than they could have, sure, but to call it "pretty successful" I think it would have be better than if he just... didn't do much. He didn't have to be as open and aggressive about firing people or opening up the content policy. Openly insulting advertisers, for instance, was a completely unforced error. I think doing less would have kept more value (leaving ethics/morality entirely aside), and…

> pretty successful What are the metrics of success in this case? Making more money, a failure. Moving the Overton window to the very far-right, success. I would argue that the goal is quite obviously the latter, and Musk was very open about this. Given that was the goal, his takeover of Twitter was extremely successful!

He sure claimed to also want to make money on it. With how much debt he took on, he didn't have much choice. Even with the political goal, he could have moved the overton window better by less ridiculous means. (And as I mentioned in another comment, his attempts to squirm out of the sale are evidence against it being a big master plan; for that to be a fakeout requires an unlikely level of depth.)

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#582

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

rockemsockem wrote: post #410
blargey wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the third+ flavor of “bad release” this year, of the sort nobody else in this crowded space suffers from, is as innocuous as you think it is. And Tay was a non-LLM user account released a full 6 years before ChatGPT; you might as well bring up random users’ markov chains.

I posted the Wikipedia page, do you really think I don't know how long ago Tay was? I don't think the capabilities matter if we're just talking about chat bots being racist online. Also IDK what you mean by third+ flavor? I'm not familiar with other bad Grok releases, but I don't really use it, I just see it's responses on Twitter. Also do you not remember the Google image model that made the founding fathers differe…

To catch you up, this happened 2 months ago -

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/14/elon-musk...

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#583

Post by rgreek42 »

quantified wrote: post #408
woah wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's conspiratorial thinking to assume that everything that happens in the world is perfectly executed by omniscient villains with 20/20 hindsight. Maybe a formerly-brilliant but drug-addled rich guy just bought a social media platform with bad fundamentals at the height of its valuation and then mismanaged it while flailing around with other ventures and political adventures. Occam's razor.

You are conveniently omitting his reason to buy it. Personal megaphone and shortly thereafter LLM training data are the simplest reasons.

He did not want to buy it. He took an arrogant joke far enough that the Delaware Court of Chancery forced him to do it. He never wanted it earnestly.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#584

Post by zamadatix »

blymphony wrote: post #557
martinpw wrote: post #497

The Economist always comes up with good tag lines for stories. In this case: Linda Yaccarino goes from X CEO to ex-CEO. https://www.economist.com/business/2025/07/09/linda-yaccarin...

What are other memorable tag lines from them?

I don't read the Economist much but I was curious as I'm always down for punny headlines, found this collection: https://www.ironicsans.com/2007/06/the_best_and_worst_of_the...

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#585

Post by Lu2025 »

mrweasel wrote: post #130
Hoasi wrote: post #50

X has been nothing short of an exercise in brand destruction. However, despite all the drama, it still stands, it still exists, and it remains relevant.

More and more I think Musk managed to his take over of Twitter pretty successfully. X still isn't as strong a brand as Twitter where, but it's doing okay. A lot of the users who X need to stay on the platform, journalists and politicians, are still there. The only issue is that Musk vastly overpaid for Twitter, but if he plans to keep it and use it for his political ambitions, that might not matter. Also remember tha…

It successfully served its purpose: gave us Trump.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#586

Post by trimbo »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #29
CyberMacGyver wrote: post #4

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.

> her legacy will forever be stained

Interesting. My hot take is 99% of the time non-founder CEOs end up on the dustbin of history, successful or unsuccessful.

Terry Semel. John Akers. John Sculley, Carly Fiorina. Except among those of us in tech, all are now long forgotten failures. Even Gil Amelio, who made one of the most genius acquisitions ever, was fired and his name lost to the sands of time. My bet is nobody's going to remember Tim Cook or Sundar or Satya in 50 years, maybe even 20.

Possibly the only non-founder CEO who has made a real legacy in the last 100 years is Elon. I would also say TJ Watson Jr. but I very much wonder if that many HN commenters know who he is!

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#587

Post by bnralt »

peab wrote: post #381
fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> liberal echo chamber It skews one way, but there's definitely a large diversity in opinions on Reddit that are not hard to find. It's also transitioning into an India social media site, just from sheer population numbers.

reddit is like the most censored part of the internet at the moment.

Right, Reddit banned any sub that disagreed with the progressive positions on Transgender issues, any mainstream subs would ban users for disagreeing with those positions, and heterodox subs were warned not to discuss them or else they could be banned. For instance, here's the Moderate Politics sub discussion on why they banned transgender topics[1]:

> The first of these banned topics: gender identity, the transgender experience, and the laws that may affect these topics.

> Please note that we do not make this decision lightly, nor was the Mod Team unanimous in this path forward. Over the past week, the Mod Team has tried on several occasions to receive clarification from the Admins on how to best facilitate civil discourse around these topics. There responses only left us more confused, but the takeaway was clear: any discussion critical of these topics may result in action against you by the Admins.

Also mod efforts to enforce an ideological view across the entire site. For instance, in the run up to the 2020 election, mods on the boardgame sub started going through the history of users and would ban anyone who voted for Trump.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/mkxcc0/st...

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#588

Post by Lu2025 »

CivBase wrote: post #507
zero_shift wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot see how it was a success. 1. He overpaid by tens of billions. That is a phenomenal amount of money to lose on an unforced error. 2. Enough users, who produce enough content, have left to make X increasingly a forum for porn bots, scam accounts and political activists. It's losing its appeal as the place "where the news happens" and is instead becoming more niche. 3. The firings did not go well. X has struggl…

> It makes X an increasingly niche website. I did not use Twitter. I do not use X. I'm even less inclined to become a user after the Musk takeover. I don't even know anyone who is active on X. However, I still constantly get linked to tweets and see screenshots of tweets (or whatever they're called now). And I never see anything from competing platforms. X may be failing by many metrics, but in terms of popularity it…

Yeah screenshots getting around is a funny metric but it's a good one.

I see BlueSky picking up and occasionally Threads. Sometimes you can't tell where it's from due to crop.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#589

Post by arp242 »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #351
amrocha wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a difference between a 3rd party twitter bot and grok. And it’s not a “bad release”, it’s been like this ever since it launched. Funny how ChatGPT is vanilla and grok somehow has a new racist thing to say every other week.

> Funny how ChatGPT is vanilla and grok somehow has a new racist thing to say every other week To be fair, 'exposing' ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini as racist will get you a lot fewer clicks. Musk claims Grok to be less filtered in general than other LLMs. This is what less filtered looks like. LLMs are not human; if you get one to say racist things it's probably because you were trying to make it say racist things. If…

> if you get one to say racist things it's probably because you were trying to make it say racist things.

When it started ranting about the Jews and "Mecha Hitler" it was unprompted on unrelated matters. When it started ranting about "white genocide" in SA a while ago it was also unprompted on unrelated matters.

So no.

Re: Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

#590

Post by saagarjha »

eric-p7 wrote: post #359
anigbrowl wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Look how normal it is for people on X to cens*r c*rtain w*rds to avoid having their posts downranked.

Isn't the X ranking algorithm open source? Does it have hardcoded keywords or how does this censoring work?

It's not open source.
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