X and Rum­ble file antitrust com­plaint against glob­al ad group

Elon Musk‘s social media plat­form X filed an antitrust law­suit against the Glob­al Alliance for Respon­si­ble Media, accus­ing the inter­na­tion­al adver­tis­ing group of ille­gal­ly boy­cotting com­pa­nies, includ­ing the video-shar­ing site Rum­ble and oth­er plat­forms.
X Corp. CEO Lin­da Yac­cari­no post­ed a video Tues­day announc­ing X, for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter, filed a law­suit against GARM, World Fed­er­a­tion Adver­tis­ers, and top mem­bers of GARM such as Mars, CVS Health, Unilever, and Orsted. The suit is joined by Rum­ble, an alter­na­tive video web­site to pop­u­lar plat­forms like YouTube that con­ser­v­a­tive influ­encers laud as a free speech alter­na­tive.

The lat­est antitrust suit comes after Yac­cari­no said she reviewed the House Judi­cia­ry Committee’s inves­ti­ga­tion into GARM that found “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.”
The com­plaint alleges that sev­er­al key adver­tis­ers coor­di­nat­ed by GARM con­spired to boy­cott X by with­hold­ing adver­tis­ing rev­enue. The com­plaint con­tends this alleged action was tak­en to enforce GARM’s brand safe­ty stan­dards and was not in …