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Wednesday, August 7, 2024

Elon Musk Sues GARM, The Ad Coalition


Elon Musk's social media platform, X, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), accusing the advertising group of illegally boycotting companies, including X, formerly known as Twitter.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced Tuesday the company has filed a lawsuit against GARM, World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), and GARM members CVS Health, Mars, Orsted and Unilever.

Yaccarino said X filed the suit after reviewing the House Judiciary Committee's recent investigation that found evidence "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.

She said X determined GARM's tactics have cost X billions of dollars.

In a Tuesday press release, the video-sharing platform and cloud services provider Rumble announced it was joining the lawsuit. 

GARM claims to be "apolitical" and "voluntary" and says that it benefits its members by providing use of "resources and information about best practices to learn where their advertising investments go, and to avoid placement next to illegal or harmful content that could damage their brands’ reputation."


However, GARM's critics have a different view of the organization and suggest that it has colluded with dozens of major U.S. corporations to push boycotts and suppress speech in a manner that targets conservatives.

In discussing his views on freedom of speech, GARM’s leader and co-founder, Rob Rakowitz, has expressed frustration with an "extreme global interpretation of the US Constitution" and complained about using "‘principles for governance’ and applying them as literal law from 230 years ago (made by white men exclusively)." With this worldview, GARM pushed what it called "uncommon collaboration" to "rise above individual commercial interest."

GARM is alleged to have worked with large companies to implement advertising crackdowns on Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Spotify, political candidates and news outlets, including Fox News, The Daily Wire and Breitbart News.

Musk has also publicly criticized GARM and previously suggested taking legal action against the group while referring to it as an "advertising boycott racket."

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