X Versus The Global Alliance For Responsible Media: 'Now It Is War'

The advertising group Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) is being shut down.

This happens after Elon Musk's X filed a lawsuit against the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which launched GARM, as well as individual companies, like Mars, CVS, Unilever and Orsted, a clean energy firm from Denmark.

X filed a lawsuit against because it thinks GARM has influenced others for bailing out their ads on the social media platform, "collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue" from it.

Stephan Loerke, the CEO of the WFA, wrote in an email to members, saying it is "discontinuing" activities related to GARM following an antitrust lawsuit, and that the decision was "not made lightly."

GARM was established in 2019 by the WFA.

Its primary goal addresses the challenge of illegal or harmful content on digital media platforms and its monetization via advertising. GARM was created in response to incidents where brands’ advertisements appeared next to harmful content, such as child pornography and content promoting terrorism.

The U.S.-based initiative created voluntary frameworks and tools to provide common definitions around areas like hate speech, brand safety, and misinformation.

It also focuses on promoting transparency and accountability in digital and social media, with a purpose to ensure brands to have a safe and effective advertising investments.

Its 100-plus members include major advertisers, agency groups, and ad tech platforms.

And here, the lawsuit alleged that GARM persuaded top brands not to advertise on X.

GARM fought back, saying that the claims X made in the lawsuit were baseless.

WFA and GARM intended to contest the allegations in X's lawsuit in court and were confident the outcome of the case would "demonstrate our full adherence to competition rules in all our activities."

But GARM being independent of WFA, and that it is a not-for-profit organization with limited resources, may not be able to match Musk in the lawsuit.

Because of this, it would rather suspend all of its operations, rather facing a lawsuit that can be both lengthy and expensive.

"GARM is a small, not-for-profit initiative, and recent allegations that unfortunately misconstrue its purpose and activities have caused a distraction and significantly drained its resources and finances," the group said in a statement. "WFA therefore is making the difficult decision to discontinue GARM activities."

X CEO Linda Yaccarino posted to X:

In posts on X, Musk had previously encouraged other companies to also file their own lawsuits against advertisers, if they think they have been affected by boycotts.

The RICO Act refers to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

The federal law which was passed by Congress in 1970 is meant to combat organized crime and racketeering in the U.S..

The law's purpose is to prevent organized crime from infiltrating legitimate businesses that operate across state lines, and to help victims of organized crime recover.

X, formerly known as Twitter, is known by many as a toxic place.

Things have allegedly been this way since Jack Dorsey era and Dick Costolo's reign. And when Elon Musk acquired the platform, he inherited that.

But since Musk has his own issues and grudge, taking over Twitter annoyed a large pool of advertisers, and many of them fled the platform after the company legally changed owners.

Musk did many things he could do, including firing a lot of people, stopped being 'Chief Twit' and appointed a new CEO, and brought back previously banned accounts to the platform, including Donald Trump.

Before filing a lawsuit, in a CNBC interview, Musk said told advertisers that stopped advertising on his platform to "fuck yourself."