The 2023 Code Conference, a highly anticipated annual tech gathering, had unfolded mostly according to expectations until its final hours on Wednesday. What started as a routine event took an unexpected and contentious turn when former Twitter head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, made a surprise appearance on the schedule. Roth, who resigned just weeks after Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter in October, had been a vocal critic of Musk’s content moderation decisions, leading to a public feud between the two.
The event’s headliner, X CEO Linda Yaccarino, handpicked by Musk to lead the newly transformed platform, had remained relatively silent about Roth until this momentous showdown. When both Yaccarino and Roth took the stage within a two-hour span, the conference took an unprecedented turn, resembling more of a verbal sparring match than a tech symposium.
Roth, seated in the same chair that Yaccarino would soon occupy, wasted no time in addressing the audience. He began by highlighting the prevalence of death threats directed towards him on Twitter, a platform he claimed Musk inspired with his leadership. “I would encourage Twitter to take a look at the death threats targeting me,” Roth said. “They’re all still there. Twitter didn’t take them down, thousands of them. They’re still on the platform today.”
Roth continued to criticize Twitter’s approach to content moderation when asked about Yaccarino’s leadership capabilities. He stated, “Advertisers demand data, they demand evidence, and it can’t just be cherry-picked evidence that the platform hands out in an unaccountable way. … I think they’re going to need evidence of progress on safety that Twitter can’t provide because Twitter is less safe now than it used to be.”
Yaccarino’s session took an unexpected turn when the Q&A microphones disappeared, making it the only headlining session without audience questions. Yaccarino responded by distancing her company, X, from Twitter’s past, stating, “Yoel and I don’t know each other. He doesn’t know me, and I don’t know him. X is a new company building a foundation based on free expression and freedom of speech.”
The tension continued when moderator Julia Boorstin questioned Yaccarino about Musk’s decision to charge all X users monthly. Yaccarino’s response hinted at the close relationship between her and Musk, prompting some audience members to chuckle.
Throughout the session, Yaccarino praised Musk’s role in X, but not all attendees shared her enthusiasm. Some raised their hands when she rhetorically asked, “Who wouldn’t want Elon Musk sitting by their side running product?”
Yaccarino also provided insights into X’s current state, revealing that the platform had between 200 million and 250 million daily active users. She pointed out that X was on the verge of breaking even from an operating cash flow perspective, a significant improvement from Twitter’s operating loss of $344 million in July 2022.
In closing, Yaccarino firmly disputed Roth’s characterization of X, asserting, “The company that was described about an hour ago [by Roth] no longer exists.”
The conference concluded with Yaccarino swiftly ending the conversation before the moderator could, leaving attendees with the impression that her return to Code in the future was uncertain. The 2023 Code Conference, marked by this intense clash between former Twitter executives, will undoubtedly be remembered as a unique and eventful edition of the annual tech gathering.
Source: Yahoo Finance
