Shortly after taking the helm from Elon Musk, Twitter’s new CEO Linda Yaccarino is making it clear that she’ll be frictionless against Musk’s incoherent “vision” for the social media platform.
According to her first company-wide email—which was also tweeted by the new CEO herself—Yaccarino revealed her intent to run Twitter in much the same way Musk has since his takeover a few months ago, at least in words if not spirit. Instead of being the hub of memes, shower thoughts, and semi-moderated political discourse that we came to know and love, Yaccarino held up Musk’s view of making Twitter the new “town square” while also dancing around the concept of free speech on the platform.
“Have you ever been talking with someone particularly insightful and thought, you should have the freedom to speak your mind. We all should. Enter Twitter 2.0,” Yaccarino tweeted this afternoon. “Twitter is on a mission to become the world’s most accurate real-time information source and a global town square for communication. That’s not an empty promise. That’s OUR reality.”
So far, that promise of a global town square appears to mean making many of its users uncomfortable with being on the platform, alienating more than half of its advertisers, and overseeing an explosion of hate speech, propaganda, and spam.
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According to The New York Times technology reporter Ryan Mac, this is some of the first company-wide communication employees at Twitter have received on the platform’s mission and goals. At the same time, this is some of Twitter’s first direct external communication with reporters since Musk’s takeover, as one of Yaccarino’s picks—Joe Benarroch—apparently forwarded her email to a select group of reporters. Benarroch works in Business Operations at Twitter according to his LinkedIn. Previously, Musk disbanded Twitter’s press relations team and set the poop emoji as an automatic reply for the company’s press email. So, yes, there is a small difference under Benarroch, at least: she thinks there is a small set of journalists who should not have poo flung at them.
“Our first principles are questioning our assumptions and building something new from the ground up. It’s rare to have the chance to put a new future into the hands of every person, partner, and creator on the planet. That’s exactly why I’m here – with all of YOU. Let’s dig our heels in (4 inches or flat!) and build Twitter 2.0 together,” Yaccarino said in what can only be described as a vague, unspecific rallying cry.
Elon Musk revealed Yaccarino as his successor last month and explained that she would be focusing on business operations. It’s difficult to see how much Twitter could really change under Yaccarino’s leadership, as the new CEO hasn’t laid out many concrete plans in her communication and her boss operates on moods, whims, and vibes.