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The quiet rise of Nick Pickles: the Yorkshireman gaining power at Elon Musk’s X

Ex-music photographer promoted as right-hand man to X chief Linda Yaccarino tasked with fighting company’s political battles

From left, Linda Yaccarino, Nick Pickles and Elon Musk © FT montage/Getty Images

From left, Linda Yaccarino, Nick Pickles and Elon Musk © FT montage/Getty Images

Nick Pickles, a Yorkshire-born former music photographer, has risen to become one of the most prominent executives at X, charged with fighting Elon Musk’s growing number of political battles over the social media platform while fending off global regulators.

X has promoted Pickles to vice-president of global affairs, according to an update on his LinkedIn page.

Insiders at X said he has, in effect, become the right-hand man to chief executive Linda Yaccarino at a time when she is facing pressure to turn around the company’s flagging business.

A longtime staffer at Twitter before Musk renamed the company following a $44bn takeover two years ago, 40-year-old Pickles was elevated from his position of head of global government affairs last month.

This came after Yaccarino suddenly fired X’s head of business operations and communications Joe Benarroch. Pickles’ expanded role is similar to that held by former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg at Meta.

According to interviews with more than 10 current and former employees as well as people close to him, Pickles is now among the most influential lieutenants from Twitter’s old guard, leading policy work at X as well as picking up Benarroch’s communications responsibilities.

That rise has led some who have worked with Pickles to speculate that he could be X’s next chief executive.

But his newfound prominence makes him a lightning rod for those frustrated by Musk’s ownership.

X’s owner has ordered further cost-cutting, leaving employees unsure over their jobs. There are also heightened tensions between the owner and Yaccarino over the company’s financial health, several people said. Meanwhile, Musk has become more outspoken politically, endorsing Donald Trump for US president.

To some, Pickles represents a steady hand, unfazed by constant crisis management and expert at communicating policy nuances.

Earlier this year, Pickles prepared Yaccarino for a US Senate hearing on child safety. While Yaccarino, who had previously been criticised for poor public speaking, emerged largely unscathed from the session, rival technology bosses such as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg faced attacks from politicians.

“Linda deeply trusts Nick’s judgment,” said one person close to him. “He can be a calming and moderating force . . . I think she knows that and believes it’s a priceless resource.”

To others, his survival comes at a cost: reneging on positions on online safety and transparency he once advanced that run counter to Musk’s instincts.

“There is an element of it that is a profound and hypocritical about-face for Nick specifically,” said one former colleague. “He seems to be ethically flexible enough to represent the new views, as he did the old ones.”

Pickles declined to comment. X did not respond to a request for comment.

Pickles started his career as a music photographer, snapping bands including Oasis and U2, before his government-lite politics led him to privacy advocacy group Big Brother Watch.

“Our biggest challenge is making people realise that their privacy is important — and to realise that the slow trickle of authoritarian and intrusive laws will have consequences for their families,” he wrote in an article at the time.

Pickles shares Musk’s libertarian ideals, people close to him said. He ran to be a Conservative MP in the 2010 general election, losing to Yvette Cooper, who is now home secretary.

Pickles joined Twitter in 2014 as a London-based senior public policy manager. Nu Wexler, partner at Four Corners Public Affairs who previously worked in policy communications for Twitter and who interviewed Pickles for his first role, recalls that he had a “thick skin” and “very good understanding of how British tabloids operated”.

Wexler described Pickles as a pragmatist who helped the company ease concerns about issues including online harassment and the use of social media by terror groups such as Isis.

In 2017, Pickles faced a grilling from British MPs, including Cooper, over Twitter’s failure to take down violent posts, including threats against London mayor Sadiq Khan and one stating Germany’s Angela Merkel “needs a bullet in the head”.

Twitter’s then-UK public policy chief offered a brief apology but insisted that its new moderation technology represented “a step change in how we deal with abuse”.

In 2018, Pickles moved to San Francisco to take on a global public policy role, within two months appearing in another hearing before US senators.

Where many Twitter policy staffers baulked at the idea of a Musk takeover several years later, Pickles prepared.

As Musk tried in 2022 to back out of buying the company, he took a holiday to recharge ahead of what he saw as the inevitable deal and resulting chaos, according to one person familiar with the matter.

The break was timely. In taking over X, Musk cut hundreds of jobs at the company’s communications and policy departments and upended the content moderation policies that Pickles had long advocated for.

Under Musk, Pickles has instead lobbied for X as the EU has investigated the company for alleged transparency and moderation issues in breach of its Digital Services Act.

In recent months, when Turkey, Brazil, India and Australia issued X with demands to “take down” content, Pickles has helped X to name and shame the countries.

Pickles has revealed the requests via the company’s global affairs account on X, which he runs, and fought legal battles on free speech grounds.

“I am reassured that he’s still there,” said former Twitter communications executive Brandon Borrman, who previously worked with Pickles. “I know he cares and will advocate for the right things.”

Critics argue that X has only launched its challenges selectively according to Musk’s whims, while Pickles has allowed transparency policies he was instrumental in crafting to be rowed back in areas such as sharing information around disinformation campaigns.

Pickles earned a reputation for being accessible in the pre-Musk era. But The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, a non-governmental media-monitoring organisation, said X has become an “unwelcome space” for diverse communities and that Pickles has been “silent thus far” on how its policy shifts were impacting safety.

Pickles continues to have aspirations at X and beyond. He has discussed running again to be a British MP, one person said. For now, he battles on at X. In the “About me” section of his LinkedIn page, it reads: “Never a dull moment.”

Additional reporting by Javier Espinoza in Brussels

Author: Hannah Murphy in San Francisco

Source: Financial Times

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