Elon Musk attends the session ‘Exploring the New Frontiers of Innovation: Mark Read in Conversation with Elon Musk’ during the Cannes Lions International Festival Of Creativity 2024 – Day Three in Cannes, France on June 19, 2024.
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A global advertising association said it was suspending a unit focused on brand safety two days after Elon Musk’s social media company, X, sued the group, alleging it organized an illegal ad boycott.
The World Federation of Advertisers, or WFA, confirmed Thursday that it will suspend the nonprofit Global Alliance for Responsible Media. GARM was launched in 2019 in part to help advertisers avoid having their promotions appear alongside content they consider harmful.
Business Insider initially reported that GARM was closed.
X, formerly Twitter, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the WFA and member companies, including Unilever, Mars and CVS Health. The lawsuit alleged that WFA engaged in anticompetitive behavior and organized an advertising boycott that ultimately harmed X’s financial health.
In the lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of Texas, X’s attorneys cited previous allegations by the House Judiciary Committee, Republicans, against GARM, which alleged that the group’s activities “steal consumer choice” and are “likely illegal under antitrust laws”.
Russell Dye, a spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee, called the dismantling of GARM “a big win for the First Amendment and a big win for President Jordan’s oversight work.”
X CEO Linda Yaccarino said position at X, “This is an important recognition and a necessary step in the right direction. I’m optimistic that it means reform is coming across the ecosystem.”
Following Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in 2022, some advertisers have suspended their campaigns due to an increase in hate speech and problematic content on the platform.
Musk told advertisers during a public interview in November to “Go for yourselves” if they tried to “blackmail” him into stopping their X ad spend.
“The whole world will know that these advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail,” Musk said at the time.
Since then, X has sued various watchdog organizations, including Media Matters and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, or CCDH, which published reports of an increase in hate speech and homophobic, conspiratorial and other inflammatory content on the site.
In March, a California judge dismissed X’s lawsuit against CCDH, writing, “This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech.”
Ruben Schreurs, chief strategist at media marketing group Ebiquity, called X’s lawsuit against WFA an example of a “weaponized lawsuit” that “simply serves as a vehicle to stifle these voices and cripple the organizations” that are trying to make the Web safer. especially for children.
Brands are embroiled in a political battle, Schreurs said. The Parliamentary Committee he said in March that it obtained evidence that GARM members illegally colluded to “delegitimize conservative platforms and voices.”
Schreurs said X’s lawsuit against the WFA will likely be dismissed. But he is concerned about aggressive moves against advertisers and said the legal actions “are more political in nature than fact-based.”
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