Elon Musk told advertisers to fuck off at the DealBook Summit last fall, and today he’s suing them for allegedly colluding to boycott his social media platform X.
Elon Musk's X sues advertisers over alleged boycott
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Texas, names the World Federation of Advertisers and individual companies including Mars, CVS, Unilever and Orsted, a Danish clean energy company. Many companies dropped out when racist and anti-Semitic content seemed to explode on Twitter after Musk took over the company in late 2022. They have remained wary, and Musk himself has amplified controversial messages. The lawsuit does not claim that advertisers can’t boycott, but that they can’t collectively decide to do so.
“The defendants, along with dozens of unindicted co-conspirators, conspired to collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue from Twitter [now X]…” the complaint reads. “Concerned that Twitter might deviate from certain brand safety standards for advertising on social media platforms established by GARM, the conspirators acted collectively to compel Twitter’s compliance with those standards through the boycott.”
GARM is the global alliance for responsible media.
