The company claimed that members of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media coordinated to dissuade brands from advertising on X.
X filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a coalition of major advertisers, claiming that it had violated antitrust laws by coordinating with brands to dissuade them from spending money on the social media platform.
The suit, filed in federal court in Texas, claims that the coalition, known as GARM, “conspired” with leading brands, including CVS, Unilever, Mars and the Danish energy company Orsted, to “collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue” that were owed to X, then known as Twitter, in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media company in 2022.
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With the lawsuit, X effectively declared war on advertisers, which provide the bulk of the social media company’s revenue. Since Mr. Musk acquired the company and promised to usher in a new era of unfettered free speech, many advertisers have limited their spending on X, concerned by reports of rising hate speech and misinformation there. By pursuing legal action against GARM, Mr. Musk continued to break with the leaders of other social media companies, who have forged close relationships with advertisers and been responsive to their concerns about offensive online content.
He told them to fuck off, and is now but hurt that they took his advice.
Musk is literally that kid whose mom made you include him even though nobody liked him.
Advertisers also don’t want their products displayed next to pro-Nazi content either. Can’t forget that part.
Unfortunately, Elon’s twitter account is still active.
Advertisers don’t give a shit, but their customers do.
Potato, potato.
Yes, since Musk fired his PR team in 2020, things have gone steadily downhill for him. That was probably one of his worst decisions, considering how successful his PR team was in falsly portraying him as a tech genius and progressive visionary. Well, now it is clear to everyone that this was never even remotely true.
Considering how monumentally douchey musk is… that team was probably among the best in the world. Hope whoever picked them up on the bounce is good to them. Or just good. We don’t need another musk.
Exactly.
I wonder if he fired them because they weren’t able to recover his image after that pedophile tweet on 2018. That’s when I realized that giving him the benefit of the doubt might be a mistake. A public temper tantrum like that didn’t just show that he wasn’t any better than other billionaires, it showed he was likely worse because most of them don’t let tirades like that show from behind closed doors, if they need them at all.
I think he fired his PR team because the image they had built up for him had gone to his head. Then there was the financial success that came with it. He probably believed that he really is a genius who is not dependent on anyone but himself - he is obviously still convinced of this abstruse idea. Yet it has always been the case that Musk was the biggest problem for his companies. It really is a PR masterstroke to hide the fact that he is actually rather incompetent for so long. This man lives exclusively from the achievements of others. This is proven by the fact that he reached a settlement with the actual founders of Tesla to allow him to call himself a Tesla co-founder - which he is not. In my eyes, Musk is the personification of the most fundamental problem that our society has: He merely takes credit for the hard work and remarkable expertise of his employees in order to present all of this to the public as the achievement of a supposedly exceptional person. This is how people like Musk and Trump, for example, see themselves. However, their miserable decisions show that they are nothing of the sort. Hubris is the term psychology uses for such inaccurate overestimation of oneself.
His whole butt, even. With both Ts.
now it just sounds like a motorbutt
What an absolutely fantastic example of “fuck around and find out.” Tell people to go fuck themselves, so they don’t want anything to do with you, and then you cry about it. It’s poetry.
Capitalists when the free market doesn’t do what they want.
Vote with your dollar! No! Not like that!
Musk is being a little bitch about the free market?
He is really weird.
can’t wait for the clip we’re the lawyer says “Your Honor, exhibit A is a video clip of Mr Musk telling advertisers to, and I quote: ‘fuck off’”
Guess what, Melon Husk… they aren’t required to associate with you and can quite publicly boycott you, if they like.
That’s dumb AF. Boycotts are legal. 🤦♂️
And corporations are not entitled to advertising revenue.
That was my first thought. Since when boycotting (aka not choosing) something is illegal?
See if Musk was actually a smart man, he’d have moved twitter’s headquarters TO Israel before starting this lawsuit, seeing as that anti-boycott act is present in like 40 states.
I suppose if he could show that a bunch of advertisers agreed to pull their ads together, he might have a case for an illegal anti-competition agreement. But I don’t think that’s the case. They all decided, independently, that they didn’t want to be a part of his shit show.
They like the free market until it works against them. Capitalists are glories conmen.
The only point of this is to elevate the Global Alliance for Responsible Media in the right-wing propaganda machine to try to get companies to distance themselves from it. Don’t take bullshit suits like this at face value
Edit: Woke up this morning to multiple Republicans in Congress calling for “investigations” into GARM
The fact that this bizarre and insane “lawsuit” is being brought in Texas should be concerning. If he gets a conservative enough judge, neither the law nor the facts will matter at all.
Maybe, but regardless of the outcome of this case, how many advertisers are going to want to advertise on Twitter if they find out he’ll sue them for not advertising on Twitter anymore?
Excellent point. I hope this scares the few remaining advertisers away for good.
Makes me wonder how much farther this shit can go before the legal system fractures when enough people say they don’t give a fuck what any Texas judges have to say and if they have to pull business entirely out of Texas, so be it.
Billionaires suing billionaires in a corrupt legal system. What could go wrong?
Yeah, but he’s using a coalition of big companies. Their pockets are probably just as deep as his if not more.
Why the fuck do people still use twitter?
Has Musk ever proceeded with one of his lawsuits till the end? Seems like he just sues people, gets the headlines and then drops out lol
That’s exactly what this is
“I can do whatever the shit I want and you still have to advertise with me OK” sounds like how an extremely spoiled and self centred kid would behave with his/her parents.
there are like 15 billionaires out there all conspiring together not to give me over a million dollars. I can sue them for trust activity right?
Watch companies now blacklisting Musk on every product.
Why doesn’t anyone like me? I know, I’ll sue them I to liking me and then I will have all of the monies - Elon
