https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/28/its-not-clear-x-ceo-linda-yaccarino-knew-about-elon-musks-plan-to-charge-for-x/

In a live chat earlier this month, Elon Musk said X would charge users “a small monthly payment” to use its service — a necessity, he explained, in order to combat the “vast armies of bots” on the platform. But in an interview this week at the Code Conference, X CEO Linda Yaccarino seemed to be caught off guard by a question about this plan, asking the interviewer first to repeat the question, then asking if Musk had actually said if X was planning to move to a subscription for all users or was he “just thinking about it?”

CNBC’s Julia Boorstin, who was conducting the interview, had wanted to know how such a shift would impact X’s business, which today is largely reliant on ad revenue. Yaccarino, who joined X from NBCU where she had been chairman of its advertising and partnerships group, would surely have known if X was attempting to shift away from its largely ad-supported model to one that also relied on user subscriptions to generate revenue. (Or at least keep the bots at bay!)