Advertising lobby group shuts down after attack by Elon Musk

A controversial lobby group of international advertisers has been shut down after it was accused by Elon Musk of unlawfully conspiring to boycott X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

The Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or Garm, a coalition led by the World Federation of Advertisers, was sued by Musk, the billionaire owner of X, for allegedly withholding “billions of dollars in advertising revenue” from his company.

The alliance was established in 2019 in the wake of the Christchurch New Zealand mosque shootings during which the killer livestreamed the attack on Facebook. It aimed to ensure that advertisers did not inadvertently support illegal or harmful content that damaged their brands.

However, a report published last month by the US House of Representatives’ judiciary committee, led by Jim Jordan, a Republican representing Ohio, claimed that the alliance had tried to influence what content appears online by starving disfavoured content, or entire platforms, of advertising dollars.

The committee published internal emails that appeared to show Garm’s leadership discussing how to use the alliance against news outlets with opposing views from its leadership. Their report claimed that Garm members had discussed stopping all paid advertising on X after Musk’s acquisition of the company. Other news outlets allegedly discussed as potential targets included Fox News, The Daily Wire and Breitbart News.

In a statement on Tuesday about X’s lawsuit, Linda Yaccarino, chief executive of the social media site, said: “People are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is constricted. No small group of people should monopolise what gets monetised.”

The suit also named leading advertisers signed up to the alliance, including Mars and CVS Health.

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Advertising revenue at X fell sharply for months after Musk, 53, the chief executive of Tesla, bought the company in 2022, as some advertisers feared that his efforts to promote free speech would increase the risk of their content appearing alongside harmful posts.

In a statement, the World Federation of Advertisers said that the alliance would be discontinued after “recent allegations that unfortunately misconstrue its purpose and activities have caused a distraction and significantly drained its resources and finances”.

It said Garm was a not-for-profit initiative that had “enhanced transparency in ad placements on digital social media by providing voluntary and pro-competitive tools for the advertising industry”.