What Happened to X in the First 24 Hours after the Musk-Matrix Post: Linda Yaccarino Explains: “Our Work Is Meaningful“

Last week, Musk appeared to endorse antisemitic conspiracy theories and posted about white pride on his social platform. Advertising from major companies was found next to pro-Nazi content in a Media Matters article. Major advertisers then halted their ad spends on the platform. To address the controversy, CEO Linda Yaccarino sent a memo titled “Our Work Is Meaningful,” reiterating her commitment to X.

While some advertisers may have temporarily paused investments because of a misleading and manipulated article, the data will tell the real story. Because for all of us who work at X, we’ve been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination, as there’s no place for it anywhere in the world.

Let us keep putting our values to work and giving one another the support they need. I am very proud to be on the front line and I will see you at the office tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, Semafor reports that Yaccarino has enlisted her son Matt Madrazo to reboot X’s political advertising business, in hopes to make up for the revenue lost by the “temporarily paused investments” of what previously were some of the company’s biggest clients.

Yaccarino expressed her enthusiasm about the company in an email to all of the employees. In the memo, first published by The Hollywood Reporter and obtained by The Verge, she claimed that advertisers had “temporarily paused investments” — an interesting way to phrase major advertisers like Apple, Disney, and IBM pulling their business from the platform because of Musk’s seeming endorsement of antisemitism. She blamed the platform’s reputation for being damaged by articles that she believed were manipulated. “The data will tell the real story,” she wrote in her memo, possibly a reference to Musk’s post / screenshot indicating that he would sue Media Matters.

Yaccarino, meanwhile, has insisted that advertisers aren’t permanently pulling back their X presence. “Some advertisers may have temporarily paused but I do want to go on record, I had several really good conversations today,” she told employees at an all-hands after the lawsuit, according to Fortune. She urged employees to work together to bring in new revenue and to be as fiscally responsible as possible to offset potential losses from advertisers.

Neither Paxton nor X argues that Media Matters was falsely claiming to see ads on pro-Nazi content. In fact, the suit confirms that the screenshots the organization posted are real. But it alleges the organization “manipulated” the service to make X serve the offending ads. “Media Matters has manipulated the algorithms governing the user experience on X to bypass safeguards and create images of X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts adjacent to racist, incendiary content, leaving the false impression that these pairings are anything but what they actually are: manufactured, inorganic, and extraordinarily rare.” The alleged manipulation involved creating an account that exclusively followed a combination of major brands and extremist content, then “endlessly scrolling and refreshing its unrepresentative, hand-selected feed” until it saw a confluence of the two.

Nearly simultaneously, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opened an investigation into Media Matters for “potential fraudulent activity.” Musk wrote on his account, that fraud has both civil and criminal penalties. Musk had previously responded to a tweet by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller that suggested conservative attorneys general (like Paxton) look into fraud charges.