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:
And X CFO Linda Yaccarino said GARM’s decision was an “important acknowledgment and a necessary step in the right direction”:
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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