X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced Tuesday, that the social media company has filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), activist organizations that have been accused of pressuring brands against advertising on right-leaning platforms.
According to its website, GARM was ostensibly founded by the World Federation of Advertisers in 2019 in a bid to “help the industry address the challenge of illegal or harmful content on digital media platforms and its monetization via advertising.” However critics have slammed the organization for coordinating and leading boycott campaigns by brands against conservative news sites and right-leaning content creators on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, X and Rumble.
In a video posted to X, Yaccarino accuses the organizations -- along with GARM members CVS Health, Mars, Orsted and Unilever -- of what Yaccarino calls a “systematic illegal boycott” of the platform. She cites an explosive July report from the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee titled, “GARM’s (Global Alliance for Responsible Media) Harm.”
According to the House report: Through GARM, large corporations, advertising agencies, and industry associations participated in boycotts and other coordinated action to demonetize platforms, podcasts, news outlets, and other content deemed disfavored by GARM and its members. This collusion can have the effect of eliminating a variety of content and viewpoints available to consumers.
The Judiciary report specifically addresses boycotts of X, The Joe Rogan Experience/Spotify and “Candidates, platforms, and news outlets with opposing political views.”
In particular it addresses organization member concerns over Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform then known as Twitter. One member, according to the report, suggested that fellow members stop paid advertisements on the service, contributing to a precipitous drop in revenue.
“GARM’s internal documents show that GARM was asked by a member to ‘arrange a meeting and hear more about [GARM’s] perspectives about the Twitter situation and a possible boycott from many companies,” the report’s authors note. GARM also held ‘extensive debriefing and discussion around Elon Musks’ [sic] takeover of Twitter,’ providing ample opportunity for the boycott to be organized.”
X notably re-joined GARM in early July, stating, that “X is committed to the safety of our global town square and proud to be part of the GARM community.”
Yaccarino in Tuesday's statement said that GARM’s “illegal behavior of these organizations and their executives cost X billions of dollars.”
“We tried being nice for 2 years and got nothing but empty words," Musk wrote on X. "Now, it is war.” The social media platform owner had famously slammed advertisers last year, saying “If somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself...” He also promised at the time to document companies participating in the boycott “in great detail.”
In another X post, Musk says, "I strongly encourage any company who has been systematically boycotted by advertisers to file a lawsuit. There may also be criminal liability via the RICO Act."
Video streaming platform Rumble has joined X, in the lawsuit, writing on X, "GARM was a conspiracy to perpetrate an advertiser boycott of Rumble and others, and that's illegal."
The lawsuit comes as the US governmental crackdown on big tech antitrust made headlines Monday, with a landmark court ruling that Google is maintaining a search monopoly through illegal acts.
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski wrote Tuesday on X: "Google just found out that they can't rig the search market to exclude their competitors anymore. And soon a cabal of advertisers and agencies will find out that they can't arbitrarily engineer a boycott of Rumble & X. We've joined @X to sue them, and we'll see them in court."
