Musk’s X accused advertisers of illegally boycotting his site
A lawsuit brought forward by X Corp, the parent company of Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), has been dismissed by a US judge.
The antitrust suit, filed in 2024 alleged that the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), as well as large companies like Unilever and Mars, conspired to withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue through an illegal boycott.
US District Judge Jane Boyle dismissed the case in federal court after determining that X had failed to show it had suffered any harm under federal antitrust laws. Defendants successfully argued that X failed to show they acted in unison rather than making individual and separate business decisions about where to spend ad dollars.
X argued the group of advertisers acted against their own economic self-interest in an organised conspiracy against the social media platform, which would violate US federal antitrust laws to promote fair competition between companies.
The social media platform alleged the advertisers had unfairly withheld adspend by following safety standards set by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).
GARM was a voluntary organisation set up by the WFA in the wake of the Christchurch New Zealand Mosque shooting to help brands address the challenge of their ads appearing next to illegal and harmful content.
The organisation was discontinued in August 2024 following the antitrust lawsuit filed by Musk.
Judge Boyle said, alongside her judgement: “[GARM] did not buy advertising space from X to sell to advertisers nor did it, in such an arrangement, tell X not to sell directly to Garm’s customers.
“The very nature of the alleged conspiracy does not state an antitrust claim, and the court therefore has no qualm dismissing with prejudice,” she concluded.
This is the second courtroom loss for Musk, who was found by a US jury last week to be liable for claims he defrauded X (Twitter) shareholders by attempting to drag down the platform’s stock price to allow him to renegotiate or back out of the $44bn takeover deal.
X is far from the only social media platform under scrutiny in recent weeks, though. Both Meta and TikTok were accused last week of risking user safety in order to fuel engagement and algorithms.
