If there's one thing that has become abundantly clear over the past 12 months, it's that Linda Yaccarino is definitely not the CEO of X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

From the moment Yaccarino was named, following a storied career at NBCUniversal, questions arose as to exactly how much influence she would wield at the company, with owner Elon Musk using his newfound celebrity to effect wild changes at the app, then bask in the media furor that each produced. A tag of 'CEO in name only' quickly became appended to Yaccarino's post, but that term also carries a level of sexism and bias, which diminishes Yaccarino's accomplishment.

Quite obviously, with her track record, Yaccarino should be allowed to prove herself without jumping to quickfire judgments?

Unfortunately, at every turn, Yaccarino has proved to live up to this cruel label: Musk clearly is pulling all the strings, doing whatever he likes with his new toy.

And worse than being merely an apologist for Musk's worst instincts, Yaccarino has been enabling: she moves the moral positions of her own to fit better the conflicting turns of Musk. There is no excuse for most of what Musk has said, but every single time, Yaccarino had found one, along with how to integrate whatever it was Musk was saying into X's singular vision and approach, which seems to change weekly.

Not when, in contradistinction to a robust pushback, Musk encourages advertisers to 'go f yourself,' not when he amplifies offensive, misinformed views, not when he re-platforms dangerous conspiracy theorists. To the contrary, Yaccarino is there with praise and support, clapping him on from the sidelines with all the fervour of a dedicated soccer mom. For her, Elon can do no wrong, but as the CEO that's simply not workable.

Yaccarino must step up. This is, after all, a role to which she has repeatedly said she was assigned: fixing the ad business for the company, yet since she took the reins, the site has lost more ad partners on account of Musk's impulsive rants and actions. Musk said that X's ad revenue was down 50% year-over-year before he amplified an antisemitic trope, which then saw even more major brands pause their campaigns. X is likely to bring in around $2b in ad revenue for the year, down from $4.4b in 2022, and Yaccarino's task has continually been made more challenging by her erratic boss. But again, Yaccarino is a CEO and must push back, and as an industry veteran with her reputation at stake, Yaccarino herself has to become more vocal in speaking out against the whims of Musk.
But she's certainly not going to do that. Yaccarino appears sated enough to continue trotting out the meaningless statistics, which she seems to believe paint a pretty glowing picture of her continued failures at X. If X is going to get its ad business back on track, it needs a CEO who is going to resonate with brand leaders to show them their issues are being listened to, while imparting hard-won, verifiable insights that matter to those leaders.

It needs a leader who is going to call Musk out on his b.s., who is capable of negotiating with Elon on his various contradictions and hypocritical stances. It needs someone more than just a glorified spin doctor. Whether such a person actually exists is debatable, but Yaccarino clearly is not it.

Perhaps, after a year on the job, Yaccarino will finally shift gears and demonstrate some real leadership. But thus far, she's done nothing to suggest, at least externally, that she's anything more than Elon's propaganda chief.