'It is war': Elon Musk's X sues ad industry group over 'boycott' of Twitter replacement

Elon Musk’s social media company X, formerly known as Twitter, has filed a lawsuit against a group of advertisers, accusing them of violating antitrust laws while boycotting the platform.

Filed on Tuesday in the United States District Court for the District of Northern Texas, the lawsuit alleges that the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), “conspired” to “collectively withhold billions in advertising revenue” from the company. Among those brands specifically cited in the lawsuit are CVS, Unilever, Mars, and Danish renewable energy company Orsted.

GARM is an initiative under the World Federation of Advertisers, that works to works to help brands avoid advertising alongside illegal or harmful content.

The boycotts, which included dozens of companies along with those specifically named in the lawsuit, stemmed from concerns that what was then known as Twitter did not properly adhere to GARM’s content safety standards.

The lawsuit alleges, however, that these boycotts were a violation of antitrust laws, calling them a “coercive exercise of market power by advertisers acting to collectively promote their own economic interests through commercial restraints at the expense of social media platforms and their users.”

X executives respond

Linda Yaccarino, the chief executive officer of X, penned an open letter on Tuesday, alleging that the boycotts had cost the company billions of dollars in revenue.

“To put it simply, people are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is undermined and some viewpoints are not funded over others as part of an illegal boycott,” Yaccarino wrote.

Musk was somewhat blunter in his own Tuesday statement, saying on X, “We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war.”

According to the lawsuit, the boycotts began in November 2022, shortly after Musk acquired the company, and were due to concerns that Musk’s pledges to loosen content restrictions would leave the platform no longer compliant with GARM’s standards.

While lawsuit alleges that the company has subsequently applied brand safety standards that are comparable to those of GARM, the boycotts have continued.

A longstanding contentious relationship

The social media giant has had a contentious relationship with advertisers over content moderation since Musk acquired the company in 2022.

When speaking at the New York Times DealBook summit last November, shortly after several major companies including Apple, IBM and Walt Disney had pulled ads from X after Musk called an antisemitic post on the platform “the actual truth,” Musk lashed out, calling the advertising boycott “blackmail” and repeatedly telling those advertisers to “(expletive) yourself.”

In July 2023, X Corp. filed a lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a non-profit that published reports on hate speech on the platform, alleging that they were damaging to the business interests of the company.

That lawsuit was dismissed by a judge in March.

X Corp. also sued media watchdog group Media Matters in November, 2023, claiming that the group’s report showing advertisements appearing next to posts on X that praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party were misleading and defaming. That lawsuit is set to head to trial in April, 2025.

Max Hauptman is a Trending Reporter for USA TODAY. He can be reached at MHauptman@gannett.com