Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, is suing a group of advertisers in an antitrust lawsuit alleging the group conspired to “boycott” advertising on the social media platform.
The suit, filed in Federal Court in Texas on Tuesday, names the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) as the primary defendant.
Related: Elon Musk: Disney CEO Bob Iger ‘Should Be Fired Immediately’
GARM, established in 2019, is an initiative set up by the World Federation of Advertisers to “help the industry address the challenge of illegal or harmful content on digital media platforms and its monetization via advertising.” It’s noted that the alliance claims to be apolitical.
Companies that have joined GARM include CVS, BP, McDonald’s, and Nike. Unilever, Mars, CVS Health, and Orsted were also named as independent defendants.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino posted about the suit in an open letter on X.
A Message to X Users pic.twitter.com/6bZOYPhWVa
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) August 6, 2024
“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,” Yaccarino said. “The illegal behavior of these organizations and their executives cost X billions of dollars.”
The lawsuit points to the early days of Musk’s takeover of Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 when advertisers began to drop out over mounting concerns their advertisements would appear next to controversial content and hate speech on the platform.
X faced mass advertiser dropout in the immediate months following Musk’s takeover, with a February 2023 report estimating that 60% of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers had stopped advertising on the platform as of the month prior.
Musk famously told advertisers to “go f*** yourselves” at the DealBook conference in November 2023.
Musk commented on the suit in a post on X Monday claiming it is now “war” with the group of advertisers.
“I strongly encourage any company who has been systematically boycotted by advertisers to file a lawsuit,” he said.
Related: Over 50% of Twitter’s Top Advertisers Have Dropped Out: Report
Full revenue data for the company since Musk’s takeover is unavailable as X is no longer a publicly traded company under Musk’s ownership.
