After Elon Musk told advertisers fleeing the platform to “go f*ck yourself” in November, X has filed an antitrust lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and major brands for their “massive advertiser boycott”.
As well as GARM, X is taking action against the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), and GARM members CVS Health, Mars, Orsted, and Unilever.
In an open letter posted to the social media platform by X CEO, Linda Yaccarino, she claims that “The illegal behavior of these organizations and their executives cost X billions of dollars.”
“The consequence – perhaps the intent – of this boycott was to seek to deprive X’s users, be they sports fans, gamers, journalists, activists, parents or political and corporate leaders, of the Global Town Square,” Yaccarino added.
Posting to his own account, Elon Musk added “We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war.”
Advertisers began withdrawing from the site at the end of 2023 after Musk posted his agreement with an antisemitic tweet, claiming Jewish communities were pushing “dialectical hatred against whites.” Combined with a reported rise in hate speech on the platform, the decision was made by several major companies that X was no longer brand-safe.
In a December interview on stage in New York, Musk told interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin “if someone’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go f*ck yourself.”
In June, Musk backtracked in an interview with Mark Read, chief executive of WPP, in a session at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France.
Insisting that his original message “was with respect to freedom of speech,” Musk said “Advertisers have a right to appear next to content that they find compatible with their brands. That’s totally fine… What is not cool is insisting that there can be no content that they disagree with on the platform.”
On Tuesday, Musk tweeted his encouragement for “any company who has been systematically boycotted by advertisers to file a lawsuit,” and added that “Everyone who has been boycotted should file a lawsuit in every country they’ve been boycotted.”
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Top image: Elon Musk