Elon Musk’s X sued a group of advertisers on Tuesday, alleging that a “massive advertiser boycott” in the early days of the Tesla founder’s takeover of Twitter nearly two years ago had withheld billions of dollars in advertising revenue and violated antitrust laws.
The sweeping antitrust lawsuit, filed in a federal court based in Wichita Falls, Texas, accuses the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and member companies Unilever, Mars, CVS Health, and Orsted of colluding to harm Twitter’s business model shortly after Musk acquired the social-media platform for $44 billion in November 2022. The WFA organized a boycott through its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative, which deemed the company non-compliant with its brand safety standards.
Those standards were used to “govern the display of specified types of sensitive content on advertiser-supported digital media and social media platforms,” according to the lawsuit.
“Internally, GARM celebrated — and took responsibility for — the massive economic harm imposed on Twitter by the boycott, boasting within just a few months of the start of the boycott that ‘they [Twitter] are 80% below revenue forecasts,'” the 44-page complaint states.
The boast was made by GARM head Rob Rakowitz, whose internal emails were obtained by the House Judiciary Committee. The Republican-led panel published a damning report in July, detailing how GARM suppressed online speech and pulled ads from companies, including X, as part of its illegal boycott.
“Evidence obtained by the Committee shows that 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 for consumers,” the 39-page report says.
Musk took to his rebranded social-media platform, declaring “war” against GARM and the WFA after trying to seek “peace” since 2022. His post includes an open letter to advertisers written by X CEO Linda Yaccarino, who vowed that the advertiser group’s behavior “cannot be allowed to continue.”
Yaccarino also posted a two-minute video, explaining that X filed the antitrust lawsuit to protect users’ free speech against outside influence. She references the House Judiciary report in the video and open letter.
Tuesday’s lawsuit demands a trial by jury on all claims against the defendants.
GARM’s boycott wasn’t the only time that Musk clashed with advertisers. In November 2023, numerous corporate brands left X over concerns about their ads appearing alongside “white nationalist and pro-Nazi content” on the site. The claim was purveyed by Media Matters, which accused Musk of endorsing an antisemitic post amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
X, in turn, sued the progressive media watchdog for intentionally “harming X and its business” with advertisers. That lawsuit has been scheduled for a trial in April 2025.
Musk later criticized the advertisers that fled X, telling them to “go f**k yourself” for attempting to “blackmail” him. One of his comments was seemingly directed at Disney CEO Bob Iger, whose multibillion-dollar company was one of many to leave the platform late last year.