Elon Musk-owned X has driven the speech-censoring arm of a major advertising group to shut down after suing the organization for allegedly leading a “massive advertiser boycott” against X that violated antitrust laws.
“I was shocked by the evidence uncovered by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee that a group of companies organized a systematic illegal boycott against X,” said X CEO Linda Yaccarino in a video statement on August 6, the day the lawsuit was filed.
“It is just wrong. And that is why we are taking action,” Yaccarino continued, announcing that the company had just filed “an antitrust lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), four of its key members, and the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA).”
X (formerly Twitter) accused GARM, a “brand safety” non-profit initiative of WFA, of “collectively withhold[ing] billions of dollars in advertising from Twitter” after Musk bought the social media platform in late 2022.