Twitter/X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino quit after the Grok-MechaHitler debacle

As we discussed, Elon Musk’s Twitter chatbot Grok is going through some things. Grok is AI, and for the past year, there’s been a quiet conversation about how Grok is surprisingly woke, especially given Grok’s steady diet of propaganda and white-supremacist bullsh-t. Well, Elon Musk finally realized that Grok was “too woke” for a white supremacist propaganda machine like Twitter, so he fooled around with Grok’s code to make the chatbot less woke. Grok became a full-blown Nazi overnight, posting hate speech and declaring itself “MechaHitler.” By Wednesday, Grok’s Nazi wings had been clipped. Several other things happened within those 24 hours: Twitter/X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino stepped down. So did Uday Ruddarraju, the head of XAi’s infrastructure.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino said Wednesday she is stepping down from her role.

Why it matters: Yaccarino was the first permanent CEO Elon Musk hired after buying the platform in 2022. Under her leadership, X has managed to maintain its dominance as the top social discourse app in the U.S., but its ads business still faces challenges.

Yaccarino announced the decision in a post on X. “When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company,” she said. Yaccarino continued that she was “grateful” to Musk “for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”

“I’m incredibly proud of the X team – the historic business turnaround we have accomplished together has been nothing short of remarkable,” she said.

Musk replied to Yaccarino’s announcement in a brief post, thanking her for her contributions.

[From Axios]

This is NSFW, but if you go here, you can actually see the receipts of Nazi Grok sexually harassing Yaccarino, and Musk’s team furiously deleting all of the evidence of that harassment. Yaccarino quit X just hours later. I imagine she’s leaving with quite the exit package too, especially if she threatened to drag Musk’s drugged-out Nazi ass to court. Additionally, this whole “MechaHitler” episode is going to make it that much easier for the European Union to regulate and/or ban Twitter.

Photos courtesy Avalon Red.

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21 Responses to “Twitter/X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino quit after the Grok-MechaHitler debacle”

  1. Harla says:

    I’m so glad that I quit X/Twitter long ago, my life has actually been less stressful since I quit!! I have to ask, is anyone surprised to see this? I mean genuinely surprised??

    • SDG says:

      Same here. I peaced out of Twitter (I’ll never call it by that cursed letter) shortly after KKKetamine Apartheid KKKlyde took over and I’ve never looked back. And I was a HARDCORE Twitter user from 2009.

      But Yaccarino was complicit in everything that has taken place there since she took the job so she’ll never be off the hook for it as far as I’m concerned.

    • Calliope says:

      I’m only surprised that someone actually labeled it in the code “MechaHitler.” Usually they like plausible deniability.

  2. Eurydice says:

    Wow, his Midas touch has truly turned on him – everything becomes sh&t.

    • Megan says:

      The big lesson here is that AI reflects the biases of the people who build it. AI is very big in my industry and we have our own development team becuase I don’t trust AI built by people I don’t know.

      • Eurydice says:

        Absolutely – who built it, who taught it. The other lesson here (paraphrasing Socrates) is just because you know how to do one thing doesn’t mean you know how to do everything.

  3. Blogger says:

    What an idiot. But he’ll split the EU before they can regulate him. Evil man.

  4. Jane says:

    Two years and one month? Sounds like somebody vested

  5. SIde Eye says:

    this is just…le sigh. Please fuck off to Mars already.

    Racists are OBSESSED with Black people, particularly Black men’s genitals. They’re such sad, pathetic, losers. Quit Twitter as soon as he bought it before he even took over. I knew the shit storm was coming.

    I am spending less and less time on social media. Quit FB after the “they’re eating the dogs and cats” asshattery and I don’t miss it at all.

  6. Visa Diva says:

    I’m sorry she was harassed. But I have mixed feelings because she knew who he was when she joined the company and was perfectly fine with dismantling all the safety and protection protocols Twitter used to have.

    • Jennifer says:

      I love that it took getting sexually harassed on “her own” platform to presumably be the final straw that drove her out. Thanks, boss, for doing that to me!

      • Deering24 says:

        Funny how that works. I dunno if people are growing more self-absorbed, “I’m special,” or just plain rock-stupid.

    • Kitten says:

      The Nazi salute didn’t make her wanna quit, the white genocide comments didn’t make her wanna quit, but once it’s her ass that’s the target she’s out. She is no American hero–she’s a disgrace actually.

  7. IdlesAtCranky says:

    “… protecting free speech and turning the company around…”

    Sure, go ahead, ma’am — take credit for centering Nazis, fascists, oligarchs, racists, Christian Nationalists, and every other form of low-life scum y’all could find in the dank corners of the internet.

    Take credit for ruining an app actually used world-wide by those seeking to defy oppression, hate, exploitation, and the violent suppression of civil rights.

    Harassed by the tool your company has tried to deploy to make money from hate? Gee, that must feel awful!

    Five bucks says her book comes out within six months.

    • Kitten says:

      I mean, is the ad revenue REALLY flowing in? When I used to be on there, it was like 800 Monopoly Go ads and nothing else, really. I don’t see how any respectable company that cares about its image would want to advertise on a platform that’s rife with abusers, pedos, Nazis, sex traffickers, and the worst of humanity. Probably not the best PR move, ya know?

    • orangeowl says:

      Well said. The old Twitter was an amazing platform. It’s wild how quickly Musk destroyed it.

      And no, I don’t think the ad revenue is flowing in. It’s such a cesspool now.

  8. j.ferber says:

    I saw a Tesla today with absolutely no brand-name markings anywhere on the car. Interesting.

  9. Pickup Truck says:

    Shocking. Like Eva leaving Adolph. No pitty for that slag as she enabled this mess

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