The legal action claims that the WFA’s brand safety initiative, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), played a key role in coordinating a pause in advertising following Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in late 2022. The suit alleges that this boycott was a response to Musk’s extensive changes to Twitter’s staff and policies.
Musk, who rebranded Twitter as X after taking over, took to his platform on Tuesday to comment on the lawsuit, declaring “now it is war” and expressing frustration over what he described as two years of “getting nothing but empty words.”
X CEO cites congressional evidence
Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, elaborated on the reasons behind the lawsuit in a video announcement. She cited evidence from a US House Judiciary Committee investigation, suggesting that a coordinated “systematic illegal boycott” had been organized against X by the companies named in the lawsuit. The Republican-led committee recently held a hearing to examine whether existing laws adequately deter anticompetitive collusion in online advertising.
The allegations in the lawsuit focus on the initial period after Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, rather than a more recent wave of advertiser withdrawals that occurred in November 2023. During that period, advertisers began leaving X due to concerns over their ads being placed next to pro-Nazi content and other forms of hate speech on the platform. Tensions escalated further when Musk himself endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory, prompting more companies to pull their ads.
In response, Musk accused the fleeing advertisers of “blackmail” and, in a profane outburst, told them to leave.
Advertisers defend their practices
The Belgium-based WFA, along with CVS, Orsted, Mars, and Unilever, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. However, during last month’s congressional hearing, a top Unilever executive defended the company’s approach to advertising.
“Unilever, and Unilever alone, controls our advertising spending,” said Herrish Patel, president of Unilever USA, in prepared testimony. “No platform has a right to our advertising dollar.”
The lawsuit underscores the increasingly fraught relationship between Musk’s X and the advertising industry, raising questions about the future of brand safety and the legal boundaries of coordinated advertiser actions in the digital space.