Surrender: Advertising Group Sued By Elon Musk Over Boycott is Disbanding
The reported decision to discontinue the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative came just two days after Musk filed an antitrust lawsuit against it.
Just two days after it was slammed with an antitrust lawsuit by Elon Musk’s X Corp., the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) is disbanding its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative, Business Insider reports.
As we wrote here, the complaint filed in Texas federal court alleged GARM and the advertisers conspired to “collectively withhold billions of dollars” in advertising from X. The alleged illegal boycott was triggered when Musk acquired what was then Twitter in November 2022.
The lawsuit, and now GARM’s shutdown, follow House Judiciary Committee hearings earlier this summer revealing a systematic effort to demonetize and deplatform conservative media outlets.
The Committee called the news “a big win for the First Amendment” and for the Committee’s oversight:
#BREAKING: The “Global Alliance for Responsible Media” is discontinuing.
Big win for the First Amendment.
Big win for oversight.
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) August 8, 2024
And X CFO Linda Yaccarino said GARM’s decision was an “important acknowledgment and a necessary step in the right direction”:
No small group should be able to monopolize what gets monetized. This is an important acknowledgement and a necessary step in the right direction. I am hopeful that it means ecosystem-wide reform is coming. https://t.co/BlHqHqZEyp
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) August 8, 2024
GARM’s legal troubles were compounded earlier this week when Rumble announced it was also suing the advertising group for conspiracy to boycott its video platform. Musk piled on: “Everyone who has been boycotted should file a lawsuit in every country they’ve been boycotted,” he posted the same day.
The Business Insider report suggests “limited resources” in the face of mounting legal costs forced GARM’s decision to discontinue:
Stephan Loerke, the CEO of the WFA, wrote in an email to members, seen by Business Insider, that the decision was ‘not made lightly’ but that GARM is a not-for-profit organization with limited resources.
…
GARM has only two full-time members of staff and had already retained counsel to deal with legal requests from the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
GARM’s disbanding doesn’t mean the lawsuit is over, however, at least not yet. According to Business Insider, “Loerke said that the WFA and GARM intended to contest the allegations in X’s suit in court and were confident the outcome of the case would ‘demonstrate our full adherence to competition rules in all our activities.'”
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Now go after damaged, willful X3. Can this be a class action? Will this impact YouTube? There ar a bunch of cocky SOBS at YouTube.
A review of federal contract data by the Foundation for Freedom Online reveals that four out of six of these agencies – IPG, Omnicom, WPP and Publicis Groupe – have collectively received billions of dollars in obligated funds from U.S. taxpayers through massive federal contracts.
**Groupe subsidiary Plowshare Group LLC holds a $394.2 million contract with the department of Health and Human Services (HHS), for the CDC’s national tobacco education campaign. $201.8 million of the obligated funds have been outlaid so far, with the contract set to expire in 2025.
Groupe subsidiaries Sapient Government Solutions and OnPoint consulting, which specialize in winning government contracts, has also received hundreds of millions of dollars over the years from a variety of government agencies.
**Omnicom subsidiary DDB Chicago Inc. holds a contract worth $4 billion dollars over 10 years, to run the U.S. Army’s marketing account. Omnicom subsidiary Ketchum also holds a $247 million contract with HHS, to conduct outreach for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Another Omnicom subsidiary, GSD&M Idea City LLC, holds a $741 million U.S. Air Force contract for recruitment ads.
**Interpublic Group (IPG) subsidiary DXTRA Inc. holds HHS contracts worth over $1.1bn. IPG subsidiary MullenLowe Global also holds a $454 million contract to maintain the Department of Defense’s Joint Advertising, Market Research & Studies program (JAMRS), which recruits for all branches of the military.
**WPP subsidiary VMLY&R holds a five-year contract with the U.S. Navy worth more than $455 million. WPP also owns Wunderman Thompson, the agency that has produced ads for the U.S. Marines for more than 70 years. WPP also owns the world’s leading media buying agency GroupM, whose CEO Christian Juhl recently testified before the House Judiciary Committee to defend GARM’s actions.
So GARM is gone but I don’t see how that’s gonna help Musk in any way. He can’t force any of these companies to advertise on his social media platform despite any lawsuits Musk might file. They can just all individually say, “Nope, sorry Musk, we still aren’t going to advertise on your social media platform.” and what can he do. Nothing. Nothing at all. So “X” will still be hemorrhaging money for the foreseeable future for lack of advertising revenue. Hope the dope smoking little man boy can afford it.
They should have individually said no from the get go instead of willingly being used by GARM to financially punish X for the crime of no longer being owned by the left.
Disney is not all of the corporate world jackass.
OK smartass, just tell me how Musk is going to force these corporations into advertising on his clusterfuck of a social media platform, exactly. How is he going to do it, asshole. Just explain it to me.
Watch and learn, junior.
They could sure but they didn’t. Instead they chose to collude in restraint of trade in a secondhand way at best by being deceived by the GARM which means the management is less than on top of things and/or in a direct 1st hand way at worst. So either stupid and not maximizing shareholder value in violation of their duty to their own shareholders OR they conspired and colluded to restrain trade. In either case their actions materially harmed not only X and Rumble (among others) but potentially their own shareholders. Let’s see what discovery of all their communications and discussion have to offer to find out what the truth is.
Let’s see what discovery of all their communications and discussion have to offer
THIS. And, of course, if they try to get rid of all that stuff, they’ll be in violation of multiple sorts of laws.
Instead they chose to collude in restraint of trade . . .
How exactly was their action(s) “restraint of trade”, exactly. How did they prevent Musk from operating “X” in any way he saw fit or sees fit to do so.
So either stupid and not maximizing shareholder value in violation of their duty to their own shareholders . . .
Please explain how advertising on “X” would “maximize shareholder value” more than say, advertising on Facebook, Instagram or any one of the other social media platforms on the internet. What makes “X” more special in that regard. Please. do tell.
Market size.
And there is no “instead of.” There is AND.
Market Share. LoL. Yeah, right. The vast majority of accounts, you know, the ones that haven’t purchased the now worthless “Blue checkmark of Authenticity” are just fake accounts set-up by various state actors to feed the sheeple misinformation and have no desire to click on advertisements. And those that have purchased the Prime+ “Blue Checkmark of Authenticity” don’t even see the advertisements in the first place. So tell me again about “market share” on a social platform that consists mainly of fake accounts that are never going to buy what those ads are shilling for and those that have shelled out the money to Musk to see a reduced number of advertisements or not see any advertisements at all.
Musk is just playing you all for fools. On the one hand whining and whinging about corporations not paying to advertise on his fustercluck of a social media platform and on the other hand selling subscriptions to his social media platform whereby you get advertising reduced by ½ or don’t see any ads at all.
https://twitter.com/i/premium_sign_upNo one was refusing to advertise on X.
They were threatened into not advertising on X.
Big difference.
The federal government is sending billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to four of the big six global advertising agencies, which include some of the leading architects of online censorship.
These multinational corporations have spent much of the last decade demanding online censorship of “hate speech,” “disinformation,” and “harmful content” on social media platforms, all while being paid by U.S. taxpayers, who overwhelmingly support free speech.
Since 2019, the industry has sought to pressure social media companies through the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a project of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), a body that account for roughly 90 percent of all ad spending worldwide.
https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/censorship-industry-garm-members-receive-billions-in-federal-contracts/
Nothing says how much you believe in your mission quite like folding like a deck of cards when a law suit comes in 😂
I hope this isn’t the end of Musks legal action and that he continues going after the people behind GARM to make them suffer the consequences of their actions.
Haven’t seen a global bully fold so fast since the Six Day War.
1. Musk’s lawsuit was based on established laws of the United States (a.k.a. regulations). We should pass more of them to make it harder for fascist organizations like GARM because we all know those scumbags are coming back
2. There are plenty of other organizations like GARM out there. We should all support making it harder for them to do their evil.
Makes this action all the more important to force the others like GARM to sit up and take notice of what can happen to them if they continue doing what they do.
I 100% agree
Regulations aren’t “passed” (by Congress?). They’re made and imposed by agencies of the Deep State.
Danny has never learned the difference between a law and a regulation.
I have no doubt there will be an identical replacement entity under a new name to resume the role of the one dissolved to avoid court discovery with the same participating members.
They better be watching the airports and checking for suitcases full of cash.
I do hope the lawyers made sure to cover all their bases so that discovery can still happen. It might be a sin, but I’m gonna schadenfreude heavily as this moves forward.
GARM sounds like something I might find on the bottom of my shoe after walking through downtown San Francisco.
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