CNBC’S Sara Eisen Questions Twitter CEO About Kanye Being Allowed Back On Twitter: ‘How Many Millions’ Follow Him?

X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino faced an intense grilling from CNBC’s Sara Eisen about the social media company’s allowances for inflammatory content, particularly now that Kanye West has been allowed back onto the platform previously known as Twitter.

Yaccarino spoke with Eisen in an interview on Thursday, where she took questions on everything from rebranding of Twitter to Elon Musk’s controversial online behavior. She also defended the health and safety of the platform, even while Eisen questioned whether her definition of “healthy” content includes porn and conspiracy theories.

“It goes back to my point about our success with freedom of speech, not reach,” Yaccarino said. “If it is lawful but it’s awful, it’s extraordinarily difficult for you to see it.”

“But how many millions of people follow Kanye West?” Eisen asked. “Lawful but awful, and he’s allowed back on.”

Eisen was referring to the news that the rapper known as Ye was unsuspended from Twitter at the end of July, about half a year after he posted a swastika photoshopped inside of the Star of David. The swastika post came while West was in the middle of a full-scale public meltdown where he professed his love for Adolf Hitler, palled around with Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, and engaged in a litany of outrageous behaviors that blew up his business ventures.

Yaccarino claimed that when and if West returns to X, he will be forced to operate according to “very specific policies that we have established, that we’re clear on, that everyone who’s watching…can access themselves.” She also insisted X has an “extraordinary team” of workers monitoring the platform to maintain its public health.

But we also have to remember what’s at the core of free expression. You might not agree with what everyone is saying. We wanna make it a healthy debate and discourse, but free expression at its core will really only survive when someone you don’t agree with says something you don’t agree with. And what a great place we would live in if we were able to return to a healthy constructive discourse amongst people that we don’t agree with.

So labelling certain people or deciding certain people are good or bad is not a universal thing, because there are some people that disagree with us and our individual opinions.

Watch above via CNBC.