Elon Musk has hired a new CEO for Twitter, but concerns have been raised given the reported candidate chairs a World Economic Forum task force, is pro-forced diversity, and pro-masking.
Musk made the announcement on Thursday afternoon, declaring that he had found a new CEO for X/Twitter, with X being the wider overall corporate structure that Musk had moved Twitter into since its purchase. The new hire would be starting in around six weeks, he noted. He would stay involved, and transition to “being exec chair and CTO, overseeing product, software and sysops.”
The Wall Street Journal first reported that Linda Yaccarino, the Chairman of Global Advertising and Partnerships at NBCUniversal, was in talks with Musk to become the new Twitter CEO. As of Friday morning, NBCU announced that Yaccarino was leaving the company effective immediately, with Musk later welcoming her to the position at Twitter.
I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology.
Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app. https://t.co/TiSJtTWuky
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2023
However, concerns were raised over Yaccarino’s past statements and links to left wing organizations.
Combined with her position at NBCUniversal, she also still currently serves as the Executive Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Taskforce on the Future of Work, along with sitting on their Media, Entertainment and Culture Industry Governors Steering Committee, and is “highly engaged” with their Value in Media Initiative, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Ironically, Musk, who had previously downplayed the WEF as a “well-meaning” group of elites who support various controversial subjects including the reduction of the human population, changed his tune in January this year, arguing that they seemed more akin to an “unelected world government.”
We’re all getting banned again pic.twitter.com/ONsk8RS3Rj
— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) May 12, 2023
Speaking at the WEF’s Davos meeting in 2018, Yaccarino revealed that she thought that “diversity and inclusion” was not only the “right thing” for a company to do, but also that it was “good for business.” She argued in favour changing recruiting strategies to to ensure diversity in a company.
In a virtual discussion from October 2020, Yaccarino praised the leadership at Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal, who set up a $100 million fund to “fight social justice and inequality,” by giving money to “many important groups” to push diversity and inclusion, and work with groups that pushed for racial representation in media and creative industries.
Yaccarino further added that a move in 2020 by Cesar Conde, the head of NBCUniversal’s News group, to pledge that half of the employees of the entire news divison would be women, and half would be people of colour, was a “stake in the ground” towards diversity, with “accountability.”
On her now-removed profile page on Comcast’s corporate website, the profile boasted that she “uses the power of media to advance equity and helps to launch DEI-focused initiatives,” such as a campaign with Target to “elevate emerging BIPOC film creatives and a partnership with Telemundo to release a Latina-centric storytelling guide.”
She’s a social Justice warrior… pic.twitter.com/3MuwNe8qpf
— @amuse (@amuse) May 12, 2023
Another video from 2020 showed Yaccarino promoting her alumni, Penn State University’s “Mask Up or Pack Up” campaign, which pushed a mask mandate to all students, on and off campus.
That same year, as the chair of the Ad Council, she pushed an advertising campaign to get Americans to accept a COVID-19 vaccine, which involved working with business groups, the White House, and even featured Pope Francis as part of it.
This is the woman who is in talks to become the new Twitter CEO. pic.twitter.com/aOkIRFkNRB
— Steven Steele (@MrStevenSteele) May 12, 2023
Know the facts! The @AdCouncil is working to inform Americans on why we must embrace an FDA-approved #Covid vaccine and how to go about it. We're almost there, let’s cross the finish line. @lisaesherman https://t.co/AUv9tf9IFb
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) November 24, 2020
Musk attempted to alleviate some of the concerns over Yaccarino’s previous statements and current alignment with the WEF, declaring that the “commitment to open source transparency and accepting a wide range of viewpoints remains unchanged” at Twitter, and that there wouldn’t be any new “shadow bans” under Yaccarino.
According to analysis by Alex Heath in The Verge, with Musk staying on as executive chair and CTO, Yaccarino would likely be instead “almost solely focused on the business” end, and have the right contacts and trust to persuade advertisers to spend money on Twitter. Yaccarino and Musk also allegedly already “see eye to eye politically,” according to Heath’s report.
Just last month, Yaccarino interviewed Musk in Miami at an event, where the pair discussed the attitude of Twitter to free speech, the relationship between news networks, and protecting advertisers from being associated with “provocative” speech on the platform.
The commitment to open source transparency and accepting a wide range of viewpoints remains unchanged
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2023
That will not be the case
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2023
