Billionaire businessman Elon Musk announced Thursday morning he would file a lawsuit against the “perpetrators and collaborators in the advertising boycott racket.”
Musk, the owner of X Corp., formerly Twitter, made the announcement one day after The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro testified in front of Congressional lawmakers at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on “Collusion in the Global Alliance for Responsible Media.”
Having seen the evidence unearthed today by Congress, 𝕏 has no choice but to file suit against the perpetrators and collaborators in the advertising boycott racket.
Hopefully, some states will consider criminal prosecution. https://t.co/5W4yf1wxVO
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2024
At the hearing, Shapiro testified that members of the legacy media and their political allies “rush to paint” conservative competitors as “dangerous” by working with social media companies that have adopted the “standards of third-party, left-wing informational safety groups like the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM” to “throttle” conservative competitors online.
Shapiro said:
GARM purportedly sets brand safety standards, objective standards by which advertisers and platforms can supposedly determine just what sort of content ought to be deemed safe for advertising.
In reality, GARM acts as a cartel. Its members account for 90% of ad spending in the United States, almost a trillion dollars. In other words, if you’re not getting ad dollars from GARM members, it’s nearly impossible to run an ad-based business. And if you’re not following their preferred political narratives…you will not be deemed brand safe. Your business will be throttled.
In response to Shapiro’s testimony, Musk announced, “Having seen the evidence unearthed today by Congress, 𝕏 has no choice but to file suit against the perpetrators and collaborators in the advertising boycott racket.”
Musk added, “Hopefully, some states will consider criminal prosecution.”
The announcement of a lawsuit against the entities involved in the advertising boycott against X is the latest in a string of suits filed by the company when it comes to combating advertising boycotts.
Last year, X filed lawsuits against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a British NGO company with a stated purpose of stopping the spread of online hate speech and disinformation, and Media Matters, a “non-profit left-leaning watchdog journalism organization.”
While the platform’s lawsuit against the CCDH suit was dismissed, a trial has been set in the Media Matters suit for April 2025.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Elon Musk” by Elon Musk.
