Elon Musk names new CEO of Twitter

Controversial businessman Elon Musk has announced the appointment of a new chief executive officer for social media platform Twitter.

In a post on the site, Musk said Linda Yaccarino would be stepping into the position, with a primary focus on business operations.

Meanwhile, Musk himself will focus on product design and new technology, transitioning his role into being an executive chair and chief technology officer.

The appointment comes one month after Yaccarino, who is the former ad chief of NBCUniversal, interviewed Musk during MMA Global’s Possible marketing event, where she highlighted the importance of protection of marketers.

During the talk, the exec commended Twitter for its mission to promote “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach”, an announcement it made last month where it said it would only restrict the reach of Tweets that violate its policies.

Yaccarino’s biggest concern during the conversation was lowering the chance that ads would appear on pages that featured such content, to which Musk replied that he had implemented “adjacency controls” that allow marketers to block ads from appearing alongside something “remotely negative”.

Yaccarino further suggested introducing an open feedback loop that would allow advertisers to have a say in how Twitter developed, however Musk pushed back on the idea, stating that it was “not cool to try to say what Twitter will do”.

Since acquiring Twitter early last year in a 44 billion dollar deal, Musk has been under pressure to rein in on the growing hate speech that has become more prominent on the platform after he made it clear that enabling “free speech” was one of his primary missions for the platform.

His takeover prompted a number of fashion and beauty brands, including Balenciaga, to quit the platform and also triggered many to make advertising suspensions as concern mounted over controversial content.

It is currently unclear as to what the plans are following Yaccarino’s appointment, but one thing is for certain – we can be sure Musk will keep the public regularly posted via his own Twitter account.