'It Is War': Elon Musk's X, Rumble Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Major Advertising Group After House Republican Investigation

In a video posted to Elon Musk's social media platform X on Tuesday, X CEO Linda Yaccarino explained that the company had filed an antitrust lawsuit against The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) for boycotting the company and costing the social media platform billions of dollars in revenue.

The lawsuit, which was filed against GARM, Garm members CVS Health, Mars, Orsted, and Unilever, and the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, came after the House Judiciary Committee uncovered the truth about a "systematic illegal boycott" against X. "GARM and its members directly organized boycotts and used other indirect tactics to target disfavored platforms, content creators, and news organizations in an effort to demonetize and, in effect, limit certain choices for consumers," Yaccarino said.

In an open letter to advertisers, the X CEO explained that enough was enough. "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," she explained. "The illegal behavior of these organizations and their executives cost X billions of dollars...To those who broke the law, we say enough is enough. We are compelled to seek justice for the harm that has been done by these and potentially additional defendants, depending what the legal process reveals."

X owner Elon Musk expanded on his company's actions, writing, "We tried being nice for 2 years and got nothing but empty words. Now, it is war." The WFA created GARM to establish advertising standards for the content that its members wanted to advertise alongside, a industry standard that X argues is monopolistic.

"Everyone who has been boycotted should file a lawsuit in every country they've been boycotted," Musk wrote on X. "I strongly encourage any company who has been systematically boycotted by advertisers to file a lawsuit. There may also be criminal liability via the RICO Act."

The conservative streaming platform Rumble joined X's lawsuit, announcing in a press release that the WFA and GARM conspired to unlawfully hinder the platform's revenue. "The brand safety standards set by advertisers and their ad agencies should succeed or fail in the marketplace on their own merits and not through the coercive exercise of market power," Rumble's complaint reads, according to a press release. "All of this illegal conduct is done at the expense of platforms, content creators, and their users, as well as the agencies' own advertiser clients who pay more for ads as a result of their collusion."

Watch Linda Yaccarino's message announcing the lawsuit below:

A Message to X Users pic.twitter.com/6bZOYPhWVa

— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) August 6, 2024

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