I listened to the whole thing on the Decoder podcast feed. The verge is promoting it as “wild” and “contentious”, and the latter is a little true, but overall id describe it as a cringefest. It was hard to get through, and I got the same sick pit in my stomach I did watching Scott’s Tots. Not that I’m particularly sympathetic to Yaccarino, she took this job so that says volumes about her judgement. But she was just so incredibly unprepared to address the most obvious questions, it seemed like she had drank the coolaid (flavor aid) and was expecting to the interviewer and audience to be so amazed with how awesome X is, and how amazing Elon is, and she was totally surprised when she got obvious questions like, how is X’s user engagement since third parties are reporting it’s down, why did x fire all the election integrity people, how much is X going to charge users and isn’t having a free option valuable to keep advertisers on the platform, and what’s the deal with suing the ADL?

At best she avoided every question with vague drawn out platitudes (elon is a genius, the employees at Twitter are brilliant, X is a transformative platform). At worst, she completely stepped in shit.

The two moments that stand out: first was when the interviewer asked about musk’s statements/tweets about charging all users a fee. Yaccarino took a big pause, asked the interviewer to repeat the question, then asked the interviewer “did he say he was thinking about doing that, or that it’s actually the plan?” The interviewer confirmed the latter and asked Yaccarino if Musk talked with her about that. Yaccarino says “we talk about everything.” Like, big ooof. Girl, your only lieing to yourself.

The second was when she was asked about Musk being the head of product, and whether that meant she’s not a real CEO. She defended musk being in charge of product because “who wouldn’t want to be working with the genius musk?” The audience audibly laughs and a bunch raise their hands. Yaccarino tries to brush the audience reaction off like they were just joking or just didn’t know Musk well enough. Lady, common, people hate musk, they know he’s shit to work for, what reaction were you expecting? Are you in that much of a musk cocoon?

The last thing I’ll say is that the former Twitter head of trust and safety, who left Twitter in protest a few weeks after musk took over and then musk called him a pedophile and he ended up having to flee his home because of the death threats, was added on as a speaker at the “last minute”, and X defenders are claiming Yaccarino was “sandbagged” with him speaking a few hours before her. The reporting so far is that that’s bullshit, she knew a few days in advance and was even offered the opportunity to speak before him. And he’s been publicly saying the same shit for months now, there weren’t any bombshells she couldn’t have prepared for. Tried and true strategy, if you bomb an interview just blame the “lamestream gotcha press.”

Overall, Yaccarino ate shit for 45 minutes. It’s an interesting case study in bad PR. Id recommend listening, but if your a person with any amount of empathy, make sure your emotionally ready to handle a whole lot of second hand embarrassment.

Edited to add Casey Newtons succinct summary: Yaccarino fended off most of Julia’s excellent questions with GPT-2-level responses, punctuating her answers with dutiful praise for Elon Musk and the “velocity of change” he brings to the company. I’m grateful Yaccarino took a turn in the hot seat, but in the end she had little to offer — just some numbers that will never be audited, and explanations that don’t add up.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

“I think many people in this room were not fully prepared for me to still come out on the stage,” she told interviewer Julia Boorstin, senior media and tech correspondent at CNBC.

She’d found out earlier in the day that Kara Swisher, a Code Conference co-founder, had booked a surprise guest to appear an hour before her: Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety.

Musk suggested on Twitter that Roth had advocated for sexualizing children — a completely unfounded claim — which led to death threats and his address being posted online.

“I think I’ve been given about 45 minutes [of notice].” The conference’s 300-some-seat ballroom was packed for her appearance; I caught Swisher reclining on a couch in the back before things kicked off, waiting to see the results of her surprise play out.

But in that time, she’s managed to do one thing consistently: dismiss concerns about X, whether it’s the platform’s disinvestment in moderation or Musk’s chaotic leadership.

At one point, Boorstin asked about Musk’s recent statement that X will eventually charge all users to post on the platform, and Yaccarino appeared unable to speak to the proposed change.

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Poor woman must have one of the most difficult jobs in tech