GARM Advertiser Alliance Dissolves After Suit from X Elon Musk

Just days after Elon Musk’s Company X sued GARM, a nonprofit advertising group that provides digital ad security for 150 brands and more than 60 major advertisers, the group announced it would cease to exist.

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The group, called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), was created in 2019 to help brands prevent their ads from appearing next to offensive, illegal or violent content on social media. Advertisers argue that when their ads appear next to such content, it immediately poses a risk to the brand. In its five years of existence, GARM has developed tools to help advertisers avoid unwanted advertising.

«GARM is a small non-profit organization, and the recent allegations, which unfortunately misconstrue its purpose and activities, have significantly depleted its resources and finances, the alliance stated on its website. “We have therefore made the difficult decision to cease operations.”

X CEO Linda Yaccarino welcomed the closure of GARM. “A small group should not be able to monopolize what is being monetized. I hope this means reforms to the entire ecosystem are coming,” Yaccarino wrote in response to a tweet from the House Judiciary GOP account, which hailed the group’s closure as a “big win.”

X’s lawsuit names several defendants, including the creator of GARM, the non-profit World Federation of Advertisers, as well as major American corporations Unilever, Mars and CVS. The lawsuit claims that the boycott of X violates the Sherman Antitrust Act. However, PCMag writes, the lawsuit could also be seen as an attempt to sue advertisers simply for choosing not to do business with X.

Let’s remember that since Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, the platform has faced problems retaining large advertisers who did not like extremist content, misinformation and almost complete lack of moderation of posts. Last year, companies including Apple, Disney and IBM suspended ad buying on X after a Media Matters investigation found some of their ads next to objectionable posts.

Musk threatened to sue Media Matters, saying their report was a “fraudulent attack on our company.” That same year, Musk had harsh words for departing advertisers, wishing them [not literally] a bon voyage. The New York Times, for its part, estimated that the departure of advertisers from X could cost the company a loss of $75 million annually.