by Marie Hawthorne

Is he really a champion of free speech?  Or was this a plan, all along, to turn Twitter into the American equivalent of WeChat?  How much can we really trust him to stand up for the First Amendment?

Let's look a little more closely at Linda Yaccarino first.

Before moving to Twitter, she was NBCUniversal's Chairman of Global Advertising and Partnerships. During her decade-plus at NBC, she helped the network transition from a traditional broadcasting network to a modern media company, establishing partnerships with companies like Apple, Snapchat, Buzzfeed, and YouTube to increase NBC's online presence dramatically.  

This is a woman who knows in what direction the winds are blowing and gets things done.

From a purely business perspective, her choice as Twitter's CEO makes sense.  Twitter lost many of its big advertisers after Musk's takeover.  Their revenue in December 2022 was down more than 70% from the year before.  Musk needs to start rebuilding his relationships with advertisers, and Yaccarino looks like the perfect person to do it.  

Yaccarino has conservative credentials.  Liberals hate her. After all, she was a Trump appointee to the Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition.  She follows Ron DeSantis and Libs of TikTok on Twitter. 

But…

She is also the World Economic Forum’s Chairman of the Taskforce on the Future of Work.   The WEF has always favored heavy censorship.