Are People More Upset About ExTwitter Allowing A ‘Verified Pro-Hitler’ Account, Or That Big Company Ads Are Appearing Next To That Account?

Elon Musk hired Linda Yaccarino to be “CEO” of exTwitter (despite saying he doesn’t believe in the role of a CEO) because he desperately needed someone who worked well with advertisers to try to lure back some of the many, many, many advertisers who had fled the platform in disgust at what Elon has done with it.

To date Yaccarino has shown a talent for… using buzzwords to say absolutely meaningless nonsense that everyone knows is laughable. And not much else. The latest example was in an interview where Yaccarino continued to throw out a bunch of buzzwords that add up to nothing, combined with obvious lies. I mean…

“The rebrand really represented a liberation from Twitter, a liberation that allows us to evolve past a legacy mindset and to reimagine how everyone … around the world is going to change how we congregate, how we transact, all in one place,” Yaccarino said, adding that users would soon be able to make video calls and payments through the platform.

“It’s developing into this global town square that is fueled by free expression, where the public gathers in real time,” she said.

This is exactly the kind of empty platitude, meaningless business jargon, nonsense speech that Elon Musk himself would mock mercilessly if it came from a competing platform’s CEO.

In an interview with CNBC she also claimed, ridiculously, that exTwitter was “objectively” safer than it had been before:

“There’s also a lot of hate and a lot of vitriol and conspiracy theories and those attract a lot of eyeballs too,” Eisen countered. “And so, if you’re a brand and a business, why would you feel safe advertising?”

Conceding that it was an “appropriate question,” Yaccarino then claimed some of these “headline comments and phrases need to be continually brought to light and debunked.” Referencing her time as a top ad executive for NBCUniversal, she noted that Twitter was “our number one social partner” and was always considered safe.

“A lot of brands have left,” Eisen shot back.

“I hear you,” Yaccarino replied. “I want to take that last 10 years and put it in perspective, because by all objective metrics, X is a much healthier and safer platform than it was a year ago.”

There is no rational human being on earth who believes this.

Meanwhile, around the same time, exTwitter rolled out its new “brand safety sensitivity settings.” In theory, if the platform were really as safe as Yaccarino claims, why does it need these tools?

Of course, all of this is basically begging folks to go looking at where ads are appearing on exTwitter, and Media Matters came up with quite a scoop on that front, showing that major advertisers had their ads appearing next to a verified account that praises Hitler.

Under the leadership of CEO Linda Yaccarino, X (formerly known as Twitter) has been placing ads for brands like The New York Times Co.’s The Athletic, MLB, the Atlanta Falcons, Sports Illustrated, USA Today, Amazon, and Office Depot on a verified pro-Adolf Hitler account that encourages antisemitic harassment. The company continues to monetize the openly antisemitic account despite reportedly acknowledging it had violated the platform’s “rules against violent speech.”

The link includes some more details about the account, New American Union, and the pro-Hitler memes it posted. We’re not posting them here, but anyone looking at that account will come away thinking “boy, that account sure likes Hitler.” And it’s verified.

Soon after the Media Matters article started to go viral, the account was finally suspended. But, as Media Matters notes, the account had been “verified” since April, had amassed many thousands of followers, and had been posting pro-Hitler rhetoric for a while.

CNN later reported that some advertisers whose ads were appearing next to that account have paused all advertising on exTwitter. So, good going, Linda Yaccarino. Your job was to attract advertisers to come back, and somehow you’ve instead convinced more to leave by trying to bullshit them about how the site was safer for brands.

Of course, most of the attention on this story was focused on the big name advertisers and where their brands were appearing. But as Jason O. Gilbert noted on Bluesky, it kinda seems like that story should be secondary to the fact that exTwitter had a VERIFIED pro-Hitler account:

Of course, I kinda see both sides to this. If the focus were just on the neo-Nazi account, people would shrug and say “yeah, well, we already know that Elon is cool with platforming Nazis, what’s the story?” But if you talk about the advertisers, well, they might just pull their ads. The “marketplace of ideas” at work.

Anyway, I look forward to Yaccarino excitedly announcing next week how X has expanded its sensitivity settings to include a “don’t show my ads next the neo-Nazis that are core to the platform” setting.