Linda Yacarino, CEO of X, announced that it has filed an antitrust complaint against several advertising groups, including the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA). This complaint has been filed due to the systematic and illegal boycott of these groups against Platform X.
In 2019, the Global Federation of Advertisers established the GARM Alliance to help solve problems related to illegal or harmful content in digital media and monetization through advertising.
Yacarino added that the illegal behavior of these organizations and their managers has caused X to lose billions of dollars. The complaint cites a report by the US House Judiciary Committee which found that GARM and its members coordinated with each other to boycott various platforms and content, which led to a decrease in X’s advertising revenue.
The complaint also addresses GARM members’ concerns about the 2022 acquisition of Twitter. According to Yacarino, these sanctions were deliberately and coordinated to harm X and Elon Musk. Musk, in response to this issue, announced that friendly efforts to solve this problem have been fruitless and now the time for war has come.
The lawsuit is part of X’s broader efforts to tackle the ad revenue problem. Last year, Company X also filed a lawsuit, saying that Media Matters had misrepresented the amount of hate speech on X’s platform, and that this factor had led to the loss of opportunities to work with large companies to receive advertising for the company.
Additionally, the aforementioned lawsuit highlights the difficulties faced by social media companies in managing their content and interacting with advertisers. With growing concerns about inappropriate content and hate speech on social platforms, advertisers are looking for ways to protect their brands. This has made the relationship between social media companies and advertisers more complicated and the need for new regulations and rules to manage these relationships.
