Elon Musk’s X Sues Advertisers Over “Massive Advertiser Boycott”

Tom Jowitt,
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Advertising boycott. Lawsuit filed against World Federation of Advertisers and member firms Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted

Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) has filed a lawsuit against a group of high profile advertisers, as the “massive advertiser boycott” continues to extract a hefty financial toll on the platform.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in a federal court in Texas, is against the World Federation of Advertisers and member companies Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted., and has alleged the advertising boycott has deprived the platform of billions of dollars and violated antitrust laws.

Specifically, Musk’s lawsuit said that the the advertising group’s brand safety initiative, known as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), “conspired, along with dozens of non-defendant co-conspirators, to collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue from Twitter (now X Corp).

Elon Musk
Image credit: US Northern Command

X lawsuit

“Concerned that Twitter might deviate from certain brand safety standards for advertising on social media platforms set through GARM, the conspirators collectively acted to enforce Twitter’s adherence to those standards through the boycott,” the lawsuit stated.

Elon Musk’s X said that “the boycott and its effects continue to this day, despite X applying brand safety standards comparable to those of its competitors and which meet or exceed those specified by GARM.”

X CEO Linda Yaccarino in a video alleged that the antitrust lawsuit comes after evidence uncovered by the Republican-led US House Judiciary Committee had found “a group of companies organised a systematic illegal boycott against X. It is just wrong.”

Yaccarino also posted an open letter to advertisers that claimed that “people are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is undermined and some viewpoints are not funded over others as part of an illegal boycott.”

“The illegal behaviour of these organisations and their executives cost X billions of dollars,” she added, claiming that X has “met and surpassed the requests made by advertisers and groups such as GARM for new tools, both to improve advertiser controls and the effectiveness of our products to drive increased value for our customers.”

Now it is war

Elon Musk meanwhile in a series of tweets claimed that X had “tried being nice for 2 years and got nothing but empty words. Now it is war.”

Image credit: Elon Musk
Image credit: Elon Musk

In another tweet Musk “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.”

Musk then reposted a tweet after free speech focused video platform Rumble, joined X’s lawsuit against GARM.

But it seems as though not everyone is convinced.

A user called Dave for example tweeted that “Ad dollars are down over 85 percent since you guys turned twitter into 4chan with usernames. I’m sure this open letter will woo them back though.”

Advertising boycott

X in its lawsuit alleged that the advertiser boycott began in November 2023 and still continues today.

It is worth remembering Elon Musk’s reaction late last year to a damning report written by Eric Hananoki of Washington, DC-based Media Matters, had triggered an advertising exodus from the platform over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech.

Elon Musk had also endorsed an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, which was condemned by the White House and others.

Musk then publicly told fleeing advertisers to go f*** themselves, during an on-stage interview at The New York Times DealBook Summit.

Earlier this week Elon Musk filed a fresh lawsuit against ChatGPT developer OpenAI, which came after he had filed the original lawsuit in March and withdrew it without explanation in June, a day before a judge was due to rule on OpenAI’s request for it to be dismissed.