- X is suing more advertisers over what it claims was a coordinated ad boycott.
- Nestlé, Abbott Laboratories, Colgate, Lego, Pinterest, Tyson Foods, and Shell have been added to the suit.
- Elon Musk’s company is seeking damages, alleging the boycott hurt its competitiveness in digital advertising.
Elon Musk’s X is suing more big advertisers as part of a lawsuit that alleges they collectively conspired to boycott advertising on the platform following his takeover of the company.
In an amended complaint filed in a Texas court on Saturday, X added Nestlé, Abbott Laboratories, Colgate, Lego, Pinterest, Tyson Foods, and Shell as defendants to its lawsuit, which was originally filed in August.
The complaint alleges that members of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a now-defunct initiative from the advertiser trade body the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), illegally conspired to “collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue” from X.
The WFA, CVS Health, Mars, Ørsted, and Twitch are the other defendants in the case.
The WFA declined to comment. The trade body has previously said that it planned to contest the suit and that it was confident in its adherence to competition law.
X, Nestlé, Abbott Laboratories, Colgate, Lego, Pinterest, Tyson Foods, and Shell did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, which were sent outside normal US business hours.
Founded in 2019, GARM was a US-based initiative that aimed to provide common frameworks to be used by media owners, advertisers, and agencies to categorize harmful content such as hate speech, misinformation, and online piracy.
The uptake of the frameworks was voluntary, and many online platforms and agencies adopted them as what became known as a “brand safety floor” — content that was deemed unsuitable for advertising to fund or appear next to. X was also previously a member of GARM.
GARM discontinued operations after X filed its initial lawsuit, saying that, as a small nonprofit organization, it lacked the resources to fight it.
In its latest legal filing, X alleges that the WFA “organized an advertiser boycott of Twitter through GARM, with the goal of coercing Twitter to comply with the GARM Brand Safety Standards to the satisfaction of GARM.”
The complaint claims that at least 18 members of GARM stopped advertising on Twitter in the US or worldwide between November and December 2022. Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter closed in October of that year.
“As a result of the boycott, X became a less effective competitor to other social media platforms in the sale of digital advertising and in competing for user engagement on its platform,” the complaint reads.
Twitter’s ad revenue plummeted following Musk’s takeover of the company. Many advertisers shunned the platform after a number of sales and safety staff were let go and controversial banned accounts were allowed back on the site.
X claims in the suit that GARM members “collectively acted to enforce Twitter’s adherence” to its brand safety standards by boycotting the platform. The company is seeking “trebled compensatory damages” and injunctive relief for what it claims are violations of US antitrust laws.
The WFA, alcohol giant Diageo, and the ad agency holding company WPP are also facing a similar lawsuit from the video site Rumble, which alleges they collectively agreed to restrict advertising on social platforms, including Rumble. Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is also investigating whether advertisers’ and agencies’ participation with GARM led to conservative media being demonetized.
