Elon Musk’s X is suing advertisers over ad boycott

Fresh off relaunching his own lawsuit against OpenAI just yesterday, Elon Musk’s X announced it was taking on a major coalition of some of the biggest advertisers on the planet.

On Tuesday, X, formerly known as Twitter, filed a lawsuit in Texas federal court against Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a coalition made up of major advertisers.

GARM is an initiative of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and represents companies like Disney and Walmart. The suit names WFA, alongside GARM members CVS, Mars, Unilever, and clean energy company Orsted, as well.Ørsted

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“We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war,” Musk posted on X in reference to the lawsuit.

X’s lawsuit against advertisers

X’s lawsuit claims that GARM “conspired” with brands like CVS to “collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue” shortly after Musk took over the company in 2022.

It’s important to note that this lawsuit is not related to last year’s more recent advertiser boycott of X, which occurred after Musk seemingly endorsed a far-right conspiracy theory and a Media Matters for America report found ads on pro-Nazi content. (X has an ongoing lawsuit against Media Matters as a result of that report, which it filed last year.) Musk had famously told advertisers to “go fuck yourself” as a result of that boycott.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino posted both a video and article on X about the lawsuit on Tuesday. The video posted with the headline “A Message to X Users,” Yaccarino claims that “a group of companies organized a systematic illegal boycott against X.”

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Yaccarino and X’s lawsuit cites the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s report, “GARM’s (Global Alliance for Responsible Media) Harm.” The report claims that “evidence obtained by the Committee shows that GARM and its members directly organized boycotts and used other indirect tactics to target disfavored platforms, content creators, and news organizations in an effort to demonetize and, in effect, limit certain choices for consumers.”

The House Judiciary Committee’s report claims that “GARM recommended that its members ‘stop all paid advertisement’ on Twitter in response to Mr. Musk’s acquisition of the company.”

“The illegal behavior of these organizations and their executives cost X billions of dollars,” said Yaccarino.

According to the WFA, its members control 90 percent of global marketing spending.

Mashable will continue to follow this story and update it as we learn more.