“Today, we filed an antitrust lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, four of its key members, and the World Federation of Advertisers,” said X CEO Linda Yaccarino in a Tuesday video posted to the social media platform, adding: “These organizations targeted our company and you, our users.”
Per the World Economic Forum, members of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media “recognize the role that advertisers can play in collectively pushing to improve the safety of online environments,” and they work with “publishers and platforms to do more to address harmful and misleading media environments; and to develop and deliver against a concrete set of actions, processes and protocols for protecting brands.”
Areas the group focuses on include hate speech, bullying, disinformation, use of personal data and child exploitation. It is allied with the World Federation of Advertisers.
“The goal is to accelerate and advance the role that advertisers can play in collectively pushing to improve the safety of online environments,” said the World Economic Forum. “This alliance drives uncommon collaboration to improve the safety, trustworthiness, and sustainability of media.”
In her video, Yaccarino said she was “shocked at the evidence uncovered by the House Judiciary Committee that a group of companies organized a systematic illegal boycott against X,” formerly known as Twitter.
According to a press release from the committee, Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) sent letters to over 40 companies seeking documents related to their involvement in corporate collusion through the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) earlier this month. A report cited in the release (titled “GARM’s Harm: How the World's Biggest Brands Seek to Control Online Speech”) said GARM recommended that its users stop advertising with Twitter after multi-billionaire Elon Musk took the platform over.
“I strongly encourage any company who has been systematically boycotted by advertisers to file a lawsuit,” said Musk in his own X post about the recent suit. “There may also be criminal liability via the RICO Act.”
Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, acquired Twitter in 2022. Since then, he has instituted a number of changes, including renaming the site, discontinuing its bird logo and changing the verification process from a free service used to confirm identity to a paid service allowing users access to different site features. He also reinstated some controversial figures such as Alex Jones, a right-wing conspiracy theorist who was ordered to pay the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims $1.5 billion in a defamation suit after claiming that the shooting was a false flag operation.
“After he used his own platform X to garner 130 million views on a deep fake video of Vice President Kamala Harris saying she’s ‘a diversity hire,’ tech billionaire Elon Musk hefted accusations against Google on Sunday, saying that the company had put a ‘search ban’ on former President Donald Trump,” said an Audacy report from last month.
Last year, Musk told advertisers to “F*** off” and also claimed that Disney CEO Bob Iger advertises “next to child exploitation material.” Variety also reported that Musk sued Media Matters last November “alleging the liberal watchdog group ‘knowingly and maliciously manufactured’ research depicting neo-Nazi and white-nationalist posts on X next to ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle and Comcast’s Xfinity.”
“Following the Media Matters report and Musk’s endorsement of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, several large advertisers said they were halting their spending on X – either because of the Media Matters reports, Musk’s post or a combination of both,” the outlet continued.
This week, Bloomberg’s Kurt Wagner joined Holly Quan of Audacy station KCBS Radio to discuss the most recent lawsuit. A copy of the suit is available here via The New York Times.
“He [Musk] is saying that this group, this, industry trade group is essentially behaving in anti-competitive practices because they, you know, recommended to members of their group to not advertise on X or at least be careful advertising on X,” Wagner explained, adding that, “Elon’s thing is that the power of this group, he believes, is, you know, overstepping and that when they make a recommendation, they can really hurt a business. And in this case, his business.”
Yaccarino shared a different perspective in her video.
“The evidence and facts are on our side,” she said. “They conspired to boycott X, which threatens our ability to thrive in the future. That puts your global town square – the one place where you can express yourself freely and openly – at long term risk.”
While Musk often touts his support of free speech, he has also asked author J.K. Rowling to stop posting about transgender issues on the site, and previously claimed that “cis” and “cisgender” were slurs that wouldn’t be welcome on the platform.
“A lot of these brands did leave early on, and many of them have either not come back or come back in a limited way. And a big part of that is Elon’s own behavior, right? We’ve seen him say things about advertisers that were very inappropriate,” said Wagner. “We’ve seen him post, you know, conspiracy theories or misinformation or other things as a CEO of this company.
And so, if you’re a marketer, you have to weigh like, what is the benefit of being on X? And for a lot of brand conscious marketers, the risk is just not simply worth it for them.”
Wagner said X’s case is unusual to say the least.
“Does anybody owe Elon Musk and X their business? I think the answer to that is no,” he said. “And if… there’s a recommendation from this group that says, ‘hey, this might not be a good place to spend,’ it’s more on Elon and his team’s, you know, plate to figure out.”