Linda Yaccarino fired her right-hand man at X and replaced him with a senior staffer from the pre-Elon era: report
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- Joe Benarroch was the head of business operations and communications at X.
- He was fired in June in part for botching the rollout of X's new NSFW policy, sources told FT.
- Nick Pickles, who was a senior Twitter employee, is taking over Benarroch's role, per the FT report.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino fired her right-hand man, Joe Benarroch, and replaced him with a longtime senior Twitter employee, sources told The Financial Times.
Benarroch led comms at the social media company for about a year as the head of global business operations as Twitter transitioned to X after Elon Musk's takeover.
According to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on Benarroch's departure, he also acted as a close advisor to Yaccarino, named X's chief executive in May 2023.
The pair previously worked together at NBCUniversal, where Yaccarino was the chief of advertising, and Benarroch was her direct report as executive vice president of global advertising.
But that longtime professional relationship has ended.
Two anonymous X employees told The Financial Times that Yaccarino held Benarroch responsible for botching the rollout of X's new policy on adult content earlier this month. The employees told the FT that Benarroch failed to tell X's clients about the rule before debuting it to the public.
Adult content has long existed on the site, but X is now making it explicitly clear that pornography, including AI-generated porn, is allowed as long as it's consensual.
Notifying X's clients could be crucial since the platform is struggling to attract more advertisers.
Benarroch's LinkedIn profile currently indicates he is "open to work."
He did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent during the weekend.
Sources familiar with the matter told The Financial Times that Nick Pickles will take over Benarroch's comms responsibilities.
Pickles — a one-time conservative candidate for the UK's parliament — was among the few senior Twitter staffers who remained at the social media company after Musk's massive layoffs. He worked at the company since 2014 when Dick Costolo was still the CEO of Twitter.
Pickles' current role at X is the head of global government affairs, but he'll also temporarily be leading global communications, the sources told the Financial Times.
Pickles did not respond to a request for comment from BI sent during the weekend.
The staff change-up comes as Yaccarino faces mounting pressure to reduce costs and raise revenue for the social media company, according to the Financial Times.
The Verge reported that in April, Musk brought in Steve Davis, a chief executive at Musk's tunnel project, Boring Company, to review X's financial health.
According to The FT, Davis led layoffs and cost reductions at X in 2022 and 2023.
One X employee speaking to The Verge described Davis as "the grim reaper who only shows up for bad things."
Before Twitter became X, employees last year speculated that he could be the next chief executive under Musk's ownership.