Elon Musk's X sues advertisers over alleged 'massive advertiser boycott'

Maybe Gab, Gettr, and Truth Social can join in on the lawsuit.

e: Thought I was joking, but Rumble has indeed joined in. Looking forward to this video being played in court. https://x.com/yashar/status/1729993450001711475

It amazes me the temper tantrums such rich people can have. The Bourbon court was more in-tune with other humans.

It sickens me whenever I read comments under one of Elon's posts on X. 99.9% of them are from followers deluded into thinking that Elon is a champion of free speech and he is saving democracy.

From the COMPLAINT

> This is an antitrust action relating to a group boycott by competing advertisers of one of the most popular social media platforms in the United States.

...

>As a condition of GARM membership, GARM’s members agree to adopt, implement, and enforce GARM’s brand safety standards, including by withholding advertising from social media platforms deemed by GARM to be non-compliant with the brand safety standards

The gist of the lawsuit is

>GARM Members Agree to Follow and Enforce the Brand Safety Standards.

It's not that uncommon to have requirements for being a member of some business association. Antitrust against free association when the intent is to have industry standards?

Link to the lawsuit: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25033227/x-v-garm.pdf

> In November 2023, about a year after Musk bought the company, a number of advertisers began fleeing X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech on the site in general, with Musk inflaming tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

It's still not hard to find posts which wouldn't be out of place on The Daily Stormer getting thousands of likes, on accounts with 100k+ followers, and going completely unchecked by the sites moderation. I don't think those advertisers are coming back.