X CEO Linda Yaccarino rejects claims of advertiser pressure, touts X Money, other progress under Musk

Yahoo Finance ^ | June 17, 2025 | Brian Sozzi

[lasereye]

X CEO Linda Yaccarino says the social media giant has the wind at its back again.

Yaccarino told Yahoo Finance at the Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity that the platform is going through a "historic evolution" and has "96% of our advertisers coming back and a tidal wave of new advertisers coming back."

Her exuberance comes as the Wall Street Journal recently reported that X has threatened lawsuits against ad buyers such as Verizon (VZ) and Ralph Lauren (RL) if they don't spend more. The paper said at least half a dozen companies have struck ad deals after being pressured.

"There was no comment in the article [from us]," Yaccarino claimed. "There was also no named sources in the article. They had some random third parties comment on unnamed sources. So with the absence of both facts and named sources, and then the absence of the setup of the story, which was the House Judiciary Committee's findings and evidence that addressed a real coming together to boycott the platform."

Per WSJ, a spokesperson for X declined to comment for the story.

It's been a wild ride since Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of X, formerly known as Twitter, in October 2022.

His tenure started with mass layoffs and increasing concerns about unmoderated hate speech. By January 2023, X had reportedly lost more than 50% of its ad revenue since Musk's purchase as major brands shied away from the platform's chaos.

Enter Long Island native Linda Yaccarino, who took over as CEO on June 5, 2023. The longtime media executive spent 12 years at NBCUniversal and was handpicked by Musk to bring in sales.

[lasereye]

This is good news. Before Musk took over they were losing money, despite being a virtual monopoly. It was a very messed up company. They are probably making money now. Since they are private they don't provide that information anymore.

After taking over Twitter, Musk revealed the behind-the-scenes censorship activity that was directed by our government. He also ended the use of external fact-checking organizations run by leftists. Both of those got the Democrats real mad.

Then, the story started going around that Musk had ended all content moderation, which was false. That led to large corporations like GM quickly ending their advertising on the platform.

I believe there was a big uptick in hate speech on X at that time. I think that was lefties trying to get corporations to end their advertising.

I haven't looked into that lawsuit to force companies to advertise more, which has apparently worked. I infer that it has something to do with some behind-the-scenes agreement to boycott X. The Wall Street Journal story is behind a paywall.

Last year a lawsuit against a not-for-profit organization called Global Alliance for Responsible Media caused them to shut down. X claimed the group illegally conspired to boycott advertising on the platform.

[Jonty30]

It’s profitable now, I think. Just very small profit, relative to what he paid for it.

[TigersEye]

I’d like to wish X well but they’ve treated me worse than Twitter did.

Falsely accused me of making a violent post, lied to me about what they were going to do about it and made it impossible for me to get on X to do anything about it.

Oh, well, no big deal but now I can’t access any local X feeds like police, fire, sheriff’s office and other emergency service agencies to find out about floods, fires etc.

Twitter also false made accusations about my tweets and locked my account twice but gave me the option to delete the “offending” tweet. I was still able to read any Twitter feed while I was locked out too.