- A well-known global ad association called Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) has suspended its operation after Musk sued them.
- Two days ago, Musk filed a lawsuit in a Texas federal court, accusing it of intentionally boycotting X.
- The news of suspension was happily received by X. CEO Linda Yaccarino even shared a post about it.
Just two days after Elon Musk’s X filed a lawsuit against Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) – a well-known global advertising association, the latter decided to suspend its operations.
This news was confirmed by the World Federation of Advertisers that runs GARM on Thursday.
‘GARM is a small, not-for-profit initiative, and recent allegations that unfortunately misconstrue its purpose and activities have caused a distraction and significantly drained its resources and finances.’ – GARM
In the lawsuit, Elon Musk accused the organization of intentionally boycotting X and convincing the brands under it to limit or completely remove ads from that platform.
The top 4 brands in the association are Unilever, Mars, CVS Health, and Orsted and all 4 of them have been named individually in the lawsuit.
Considering the association has 100 brands under its wing, it’s quite a concern. Especially because ever since Musk took over the company in 2022, its ad revenues have dipped and advertisers have left the platform left and right.
It would have made sense if maybe one or two advertisers boycotted X, but so many at once. Clearly, something’s amiss.
Not the First Time for GARM
The lawsuit also referenced previous allegations made by the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee against GARM. It was accused of intentionally robbing consumers of choices and violating antitrust regulations.
GARM isn’t the only one that got sued by X. Previously, it had also sued Media Matters and the Center for Countering Digital Hate for speaking negatively about X.
But the fact is, ever since X took over, a lot of reports have emerged online revealing that the amount of hate speech and illegal content on the platform has gone up. However, X later introduced a policy to label tweets with hate speech for policy violations.
That said, the quality of content moderation took a hit which made advertisers retreat because they didn’t want their ads to be displayed alongside hateful content. Plus the fact that Elon Musk was rude to them also didn’t help.
So it might be, and this is just an assumption, that Elon Musk himself had a greater role than GARM in driving away advertisers.
Reaction to the News of Suspension
The news was well-received by both the parties that had a problem with GARM.
First X CEO Linda Yaccarino took to X and shared a post saying “This is an important acknowledgment and a necessary step in the right direction. I am hopeful that it means ecosystem-wide reform is coming.”
Russell Dye, a spokesperson for the House Judiciary panel, said that the disbanding of the association is a huge win for the First Amendment and an even bigger win for Chairman Jordan’s oversight work.
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