AN OPEN LETTER TO LINDA YACCARINO

You're going to need a LOT of help at your new gig

Dear Linda,

Hi, and congrats! You’re going to replace Elon Musk as Twitter CEO! This means you’re inheriting a Trumpian mess of something that people once enjoyed but now are suffering from thanks to intentionally poor mismanagement.

Hopefully, you’re not also a Bitcoin bully who gleefully enjoys ruining everything just because you can. Having a woman at the helm means competent multitasking, at the very least.

You proved you know how to entertain people with fun things while not scorching the earth at NBC/Universal, so perhaps we can also expect basic human empathy from a female Twitter CEO?

We’ll probably never know the complete truth as to why Musk bought Twitter with the intention of essentially stripping it for parts. But you have a chance to be the champion we’ve been looking for since October 2022.

As someone who joined Twitter in 2009, I’ve seen its rise and fall. I’ve been in the trenches and I understand why the Musky MAGA minions want it to be another Parler or Gab.

Just because you’re taking over for the self-anointed King of the Dipshit Bullies, that doesn’t mean you have to act like him.

In fact, I think he hired you because you had the audacity to call him out.

At an advertising conference last month where Ms. Yaccarino interviewed Musk, she reminded him of the challenges he faced.

"The people in this room are your accelerated path to profitability," she said. "But there's a decent bit of skeptics in the room.

"There are people who cannot separate, they're challenged by separating, the man, his opinions, and the microphone he now owns."

Linda, you’re walking into a Bidenesque situation where you’ll need to quickly undo a whole lot of terrible that was done over the last seven months. And I’m here to help, seriously.

The first best thing you can do is fix the unholy mess Musk made of the Verification process.

I “earned” my (free and not-Soros-funded) blue checkmark on Twitter in 2016 when Trump supporters made a fake account that looked like mine.

They posted a photo of the house where I was living at the time, along with the address and landline number. They tweeted as me, saying I welcomed all MAGA to come over and fight me and then have sex with me and my (underage at the time) sons.

To their credit, Twitter verified me within hours and shut down the fake account. But nothing has stopped the daily harassment. At least I had that blue check to protect my identity.

My visibility increased thanks to that blue check. I became a more trusted voice and now have nearly 109K followers. But Elon’s destruction of the Verification process during his intentional disinformation campaign has done real damage.

I’m guessing you want people to trust you’re really you when you tweet, so let’s return the checkmarks to those who had them before Elon came in like a mean stepfather and took away something our real dads left us.

As someone who never complains without a solution, I tried to appeal to Elon’s business sensibilities, which seem to be few and far between. But it’s better than trying to reason with him emotionally, because he’s incapable of empathy.

My solution for Verification is pretty simple. There are already Gold checks for the government and Gray checks for the media. (PS, you can remove that “State-Affiliated” Big Brother crap and let NPR tweet the truths again, please). For the rest of us:

Make “Legacy Verified” checks purple and keep them free because we’ve had them longer than Musk has owned Twitter

Keep Twitter Blue the way it is so we can tell the difference between real & fake trolls

That’s really it, Linda. All I ask is that anyone reading my tweets can trust it’s really me.

The harassment stuff is going to continue with or without the check, but I’m happy to talk with you directly about how to handle it. You’re going to need a LOT of help going forward.

Finally, let’s not change the name to X. Twitter is Twitter like all tissues are Kleenex and all petroleum jelly is Vaseline. We’re not calling it anything but Twitter.

WE WERE HERE FIRST.

Anyway, have fun with the Muskbois throwing misogyny at you should you do anything they don’t like. I’m always here to commiserate.

GOOD LUCK, LINDA!

Tara