Elon Musk’s X sues coalition of advertisers for boycott

Elon Musk’s X sued a coalition of advertisers who were leading a boycott against the social platform, accusing the group of conspiring to “collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue.”

The lawsuit targets the World Federation of Advertisers and its initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), which led a boycott against the platform formerly known as Twitter after it was acquired by Musk in 2022.

“The boycott and its effects continue to this day despite X applying brand safety standards comparable to those of its competitors and which meet or exceed those specified by GARM,” says the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in federal court from Texas.

X accused the coalition and several specific advertisers, namely Unilever, Mars and CVS, of violating antitrust law and circumventing the competitive process with their boycott.

“The brand safety standards established by GARM must succeed or fail in the marketplace on their own merits and not through the coercive exercise of market power by advertisers acting collectively to advance their own economic interests through commercial restrictions on at the expense of social media platforms and their users”, argued the platform.

Since Musk’s acquisition of the platform, X has struggled to retain advertisers, who were wary of the tech billionaire’s initial decisions to roll back content moderation policies and reinstate previously banned users such as former President Trump.

Several major advertisers also paused their spending on the platform in November after reports emerged that X was placing ads from mainstream brands alongside pro-Nazi and white nationalist content.

Musk responded by lashing out at advertisers, telling them to “fuck off.” He has since walked back the statement, arguing that it was not intended for advertisers “as a whole.”

“We tried to be nice for 2 years and got nothing but empty words. Now, it’s war,” he said in a Tuesday post on X, later adding, “I strongly encourage any company that has been systematically boycotted by advertisers to take legal action.”

Rumble, a YouTube-like video-sharing platform popular among conservatives, has joined the lawsuit, the company revealed in a press release Tuesday.

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story