In an overlooked footnote from Twitter’s June 1 federal court filing, lawyers for the company told the court that hiring new CEO Linda Yaccarino “will not result in a different content-moderation strategy” — contradicting the notion that the new CEO will solve the platform’s advertising issues.
Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, the platform has been hemorrhaging advertising revenue amid Musk’s many missteps that have resulted in a platform plagued by harmful content. Analysis from Musk and mainstream media outlets suggested that Yaccarino’s takeover would help the platform retain, and even court back, advertisers, despite Yaccarino supporting Musk's leadership and interacting with political content from a host of right-wing accounts on the platform.
Now, Twitter has confirmed that its content moderation strategy — which has allowed corporate ads to run alongside tweets from Holocaust deniers and other harmful content — will not change under Yaccarino’s leadership. In a legal motion filed in a San Francisco federal court in Twitter’s case against former President Donald Trump, lawyers representing Twitter and former CEO Jack Dorsey argued that “the evidence simply confirms that Twitter reinstated Plaintiffs’ accounts because of a genuine change in strategic vision.” In a subsequent footnote, the filing said (which was also noted by Reuters reporter Brad Heath):