Comment: Musk is his CEO's X-factor (and not in a good way)
By Dave Lee / Bloomberg Opinion
I’ve had a running joke on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter for a while, though I don’t think it’s all that funny anymore. Frankly, it probably never was. It goes like this: Whenever Elon Musk does something obviously repulsive to his customers — that’s advertisers — I declare it “another great weekend” for X’s Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino and her efforts to bring back ad revenue.
Consider this past weekend, when Musk’s deft helping hand included offering his support to comedian Russell Brand, who has been accused of rape and sexual assaults, according to British media reports. (He has denied any wrongdoing.) Musk also called “legacy” media companies “supervillains of speech suppression.” And, a week after threatening to sue the Anti-Defamation League and blaming it in part for X’s drop in revenue, Musk chose to say George Soros’ foundation “appears to want nothing less than the destruction of Western civilization.”
With all that lunacy, I’m sure Yaccarino’s phone is just ringing off the hook with advertisers desperate to be associated with it.
Of course, Musk is entitled to his views and is free to post them on the service he inexplicably spent $44 billion to acquire. And Yaccarino is free to agree with him. But if her goal — her measure of success — is to bring ads back to X, then surely she has seen all the evidence she needs to know that will be impossible. Conditions are not going to improve. Musk isn’t prepared to control his impulses, if they can even be called that any longer. As the saying goes, if someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. Or rather, if someone shows you who they are, weekend after weekend, post after post, believe them the second, third, fourth and fifth time.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-musk-is-his-ceos-x-factor-and-not-in-a-good-way/
