Linda Gets X-Communicated

It was a clear attempt to cast her exit in a positive light and portray it as entirely her own choice. But the truth, of course, was far messier. Behind the scenes, I’m told, Yaccarino had fallen out of favor with Musk, who lost confidence in her some time ago. “He put her on notice last year,” one person familiar with the matter told me Wednesday.

What went wrong? A lot, but it appears to boil down to this: Yaccarino’s job was to convince advertisers that X was a safe and strategic place to spend money. In practice, she became the messenger for marketers, relaying concerns about brand safety to the temperamental Musk, who has no patience for advertiser complaints. Despite her efforts, she oversaw a more than 50% plunge in advertising revenue on the platform since Musk’s chaotic takeover. The dynamic put her on the ropes with the mercurial billionaire, who brought her in to revive the company’s advertising revenue to the levels Twitter had once enjoyed.

"Elon found a lot of the advertiser requests around brand safety to be tedious at best and Linda became the voice of all that," Lou Paskalis, a veteran advertising executive with decades of experience and a good friend of Yaccarino, told me Wednesday. "Over time, it created some scar tissue with him. She was advocating [addressing] things that he didn't want to do, starting with his antics on the platform."

Indeed, it became unmistakably clear that Yaccarino had fallen out of favor with Musk in March, when his A.I. company, xAI, acquired X, effectively layering over her and making it clear that advertising wasn’t the future of the company. “That was really telling to me,” Paskalis said. “There is no way to see that as something that didn’t limit or constrain Linda’s access to Elon.” In recent weeks, I’m told, there was growing chatter that Yaccarino would be further layered under the xAI reporting structure, sidelining her even more.

Yaccarino did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did a representative for X.

In any case, Yaccarino now faces a far more daunting challenge: repairing her shredded reputation. When she strode into X, she was widely regarded as one of the most respected advertising executives in the country, coming off a long and distinguished run at NBCUniversal. But after nearly two years of shilling for Musk and running cover for his attempts to strong-arm advertisers into cutting checks for X, her once-gilded reputation has been nothing short of decimated. As one of her former associates told me, “She’s burned so many bridges, people hate her right now."

It would be difficult to catalog everything Yaccarino defended during her tenure at X. She stood by as Musk transformed the platform into a MAGA swamp, gutting moderation policies and welcoming back extremists and conspiracy theorists under the banner of “free speech.” She defended Musk as he insulted major brands and the company filed a lawsuit against a group of advertisers who had pulled their business. More recently, Musk’s A.I. chatbot Grok has grown out of control, actually heaping praise on Adolf Hitler and, in at least one case, providing instructions on how to commit rape. Through it all, Yaccarino has remained the face of the platform, defending the chaos and insisting it was part of building a “global town square.”

It’s unclear who, if anyone, will be eager to hire her now. While Yaccarino still has deep connections across the media and advertising world, she’s leaving behind a tenure marked by public humiliation. Some in her orbit believe she can recover. After all, Yaccarino is known for her relentless drive, strong rolodex, and long-running relationships. Moreover, people in the industry often overlook past missteps when it’s convenient. But for now, she’ll need to at least let the controversy cool before making her next move. I’m told she will likely spend the summer in Italy before returning in the fall, when she will begin testing the waters to see if anyone is ready to take her call.

Status Scoop | Bennet’s Bureau Bump: James Bennet is stepping into a new role at The Economist—at least for now, Status has learned. The former New York Times opinion editor and one-time editor in chief of The Atlantic will serve as the interim Washington bureau chief at The Economist, where he has been writing the Lexington column, following the departure of Idrees Kahloon, who is heading to The Atlantic. The Economist will, meanwhile, be looking for its next permanent bureau chief.

Strolling With Ivanka: To be a fly on the wall! A beaming David Zaslav was spotted Tuesday evening leaving the Sun Valley lodge with none other than Ivanka Trump, apparently en route to dinner. It is unclear what the pair may have discussed, and Zaslav did not respond to my text asking as much (it’s never too late, David!). Still, considering her father is behaving like an autocrat in the Oval Office and that he just threatened to sue CNN the other week for fact-based reporting, you would think Zaslav might look a little less thrilled to be in her company?

Musk's Grok Crisis: Elon Musk on Wednesday acknowledged that Grok had spiraled out of control, just a day after the A.I. bot praised Adolf Hitler and provided a user with detailed—and deeply disturbing—instructions on how to commit rape. “Grok was too compliant to user prompts,” Musk wrote on X, a tremendous understatement, adding that it was “too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially.” Musk assured followers that the issue “is being addressed.” But the damage has been done, and the episode underscores the perils of rolling out experimental A.I. tools with minimal guardrails, especially on a platform like X, which is already infamous for its loose approach to moderation under Musk. It also raises deeper questions about Musk’s leadership style: a repeated willingness to prioritize rapid deployment over safety and responsibility, only to later acknowledge problems once they’ve already morphed into a full-blown crisis. After all, Grok only went haywire after Musk tweaked it to comport with his views and declared he had “improved” the bot “significantly.”

Battle of the Browsers: Sam Altman is preparing to directly take on Sundar Pichai. OpenAI is on the brink of releasing an A.I.-powered web browser aimed at challenging Chrome, Reuters' Kenrick Cai, Krystal Hu, and Anna Tong reported. According to the trio, the browser will likely launch "in the coming weeks" and "aims to use artificial intelligence to fundamentally change how consumers browse the web."

► Meanwhile, Perplexity launched its own A.I. browser, Comet.