Elon Musk’s X Corp., which has long felt that the pulling away of advertisers from the platform over hate speech concerns is unfair, today fought back and launched a lawsuit against a number of firms.
The lawsuit claims that certain members of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM, have breached antitrust laws by conspiring to engage in an “illegal boycott” of X. Some of the companies include Unilever PLC, Mars Inc., CVS Health Corp. and renewable energy firm Ørsted A/S, which are accused of conspiring with “dozens of non-defendant co-conspirators, to collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue” from X.
The period at issue is right after Musk bought what was then Twitter Inc. in 2022. Several companies soon pulled their ads from the platform, claiming that it wasn’t doing enough to take down harmful content. X now says this was partly a result of GARM setting safety standards.
X Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino cited a U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee report on GARM that suggests the organization has biases and sets advertising standards on those biases. “Evidence obtained by the Committee shows that GARM and its members directly organized boycotts and used other indirect tactics to target disfavored platforms, content creators, and news organizations in an effort to demonetize and, in effect, limit certain choices for consumers,” said the report.
In an open letter posted to X today, Yaccarino said that by affecting X’s revenue, GARM was trying to deprive the public of what she called the global town square. “To put it simply, people are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is undermined and some viewpoints are not funded over others as part of an illegal boycott,” she said. “This behavior is a stain on a great industry, and cannot be allowed to continue.”
Musk joined in the action, tweeting, “We tried being nice for 2 years and got nothing but empty words. Now, it is war.”
Going to war against the hand that feeds you and burning down bridges to more advertising is certainly a risky venture, and it’s not certain if a boycott will be deemed an antitrust violation in the courts. Experts have already weighed in on the matter and said it is likely that such a boycott is protected by the First Amendment.
Neither GARM nor any of the companies mentioned in the lawsuit have yet to make a public statement.