X CEO Linda Yaccarino was one of the headlining guests at the Code Conference 2023 last week, but she appeared to be a little frustrated and ended up giving a surprisingly wild interview. She had a dismissive stance on most of the concerns about the social media app and sounded odd at times. Yaccarino seemingly wasn’t happy about having to come on stage after Yoel Roth, the company’s former head of trust and safety.
Linda Yaccarino gives a wild interview at the Code Conference 2023
“I think many people in this room were not fully prepared for me to still come out on the stage,” the X CEO told the interviewer, CNBC’s Julia Boorstin. The interviewer clarified that Roth was a “very late addition” to the Code schedule. His addition was a surprise to both her and Yaccarino. Unsurprisingly, Yaccarino wasn’t pleased by this and sounded frustrated for having to respond to unexpected questions from Roth.
The former X employee (called Twitter when he left) has been a vocal critic of Elon Musk’s leadership and often questioned the direction the company is headed under the new owner. In his interview with Kara Swisher, a Code Conference co-founder, Roth alleged that Musk intentionally put him in danger. He received death threats after the X owner suggested that he had “advocated for sexualizing children,” which is a completely unfounded claim.
His home address surfaced on public platforms and he reportedly had to sell this house and move elsewhere. Roth suggested that Musk could do the same to Yaccarino should there be differences between the two in the future. He also said that the platform “was bleeding users and advertisers.” Boorstin asked Yaccarino for a response to these concerns or questions from Roth but she mostly kept a dismissive stance.
The X CEO avoided answering many questions
“I work at X, he worked at Twitter,” she said, adding that some of Roth’s claims about the company are false. “X is a new company building a foundation based on free expression and freedom of speech.” Yaccarino also dismissed reports that engagement on X is declining. She argued that the key engagement metrics are trending “very, very positively” and sounded very optimistic about the future of the company.
Boorstin repeatedly asked the X CEO about Musk’s recent post where he said that he plans to make the company an all-subscription platform. However, she never provided a direct answer. She didn’t clarify whether Musk consulted with her about it or if it was just his plan. Overall, it was an unexpectedly odd interview from Yaccarino. She repeated that she had only been on the job for about three months. ‘It’s a new day at X, and I’ll leave it at that,” the CEO said.