Nathan Howard/REUTERS
Linda Yaccarino‘s blue checkmark on X briefly vanished on Thursday.
First spotted by TechCrunch, Yaccarino’s verified badge disappeared from her handle @lindayaX sometime after her surprise exit from the company on Wednesday.
As of around 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, Yaccarino’s blue badge was back. It’s unclear if she subscribes to X Premium.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The now-former CEO, who is also a “mom, foodie, fashion enthusiast,” is still very active on the platform.
On Thursday, Yaccarino celebrated the return of McDonald’s Snack Wrap, cheered over Dolly Parton’s appearance on Khloe Kardashian’s podcast, and said she is “anxious to learn more” about geoengineering.
Her departure came just one day after xAI’s chatbot, Grok, posted antisemitic content and praised Adolf Hitler’s leadership on the social media platform. These posts have since been deleted, and Musk’s company xAI said in a post that it has “taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.”
Yaccarino did not disclose why she took the off-ramp as X’s CEO but thanked Musk in a post on Wednesday morning for “two incredible years” with the company.
Musk thanked her for her contributions in a reply but did not elaborate further.
X.com
According to the X Help Center, the platform “may remove the checkmark of an account at any time without notice.”
Musk tapped Yaccarino as CEO of X in May 2023, after snapping up the platform, then still called Twitter, in a $44 billion deal. The blue checkmark used to apply only to verified public figures and those with a record of published works, but it became a pay-to-play system when Musk took over. The badge can be obtained by subscribing to X Premium.
Before joining X, Yaccarino was a longtime top executive at NBCUniversal.
The post Linda Yaccarino lost her blue checkmark… but now it’s back appeared first on Business Insider.
