Elon Musk’s pick of Linda Yaccarino to take over as CEO of Twitter and recently departed Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s plan to move to the platform highlight the world’s wealthiest man’s twin goals of both expanding the breadth of opinion on the platform and making Twitter profitable.
Characteristically, Musk made the announcement on the platform, tweeting, “I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!” Musk will shift to serving as executive chairman and chief technology officer of the social media company. Yaccarino tweeted in response to Musk, “I’ve long been inspired by your vision to create a brighter future. I’m excited to help bring this vision to Twitter and transform this business together!”
Musk responded by describing Twitter’s content moderation policy as “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” In practice, that means Twitter aims to keep more content up but might choose not to promote or otherwise amplify posts that likely offend most users. When Yaccarino pressed Musk on “de-risking” the platform for advertisers, he pointed to new “adjacency controls” that prevent the ad engine from placing ads next to user content to which advertisers might object.