• Tuesday, 𝕏 and Rumble filed antitrust lawsuits against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and others

• In July, the House Judiciary Committee released a report suggesting GARM violated federal antitrust laws by organizing an advertiser boycott of X in November 2022

• The Judiciary Committee report also suggests GARM leadership went after companies it deemed ideologically problematic — even when GARM members didn’t advertise with these companies

• Per internal emails obtained by the Committee, GARM lead Rob Rakowitz took credit for causing X (then Twitter) to lose 80% of its revenue

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In messages to his colleagues, Rob Rakowitz expressed his frustration with what he called an “extreme global interpretation of the US Constitution.” He didn’t understand why “[p]eople are advocating for freedom of speech online” through anonymity and using “‘principles of governance’ and applying them as literal law from 230 years ago (made by white men exclusively).”

These quotes come from internal emails included in a July House Judiciary Committee report, which alleges the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) initiative fronted and co-founded by Rakowitz, polices speech online by leveraging their substantial share of the advertising market to “demonetize platforms, podcasts, news outlets, and other content deemed disfavored by GARM and its members.” In other words, the report accuses GARM of using its influence over the advertising space to starve ideologically problematic companies of revenue.

On Tuesday, 𝕏 filed an antitrust lawsuit against the organization, four of its “key members,” and the WFA. “These organizations targeted our company, and you, our users,” 𝕏 CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a video announcement posted to the platform. “The evidence and facts are on our side. [GARM] conspired to boycott 𝕏, which threatens our ability to thrive in the future. That puts your global town square, the one place where you can express yourself freely and openly, at long-term risk.”

The video sharing platform Rumble also announced it filed an antitrust suit against WFA and GARM members on Tuesday.

Anecdotes in the Committee’s report reveal the type of content and platforms GARM targets. After it refused to take down episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience in which Rogan was critical of the COVID vaccine, GroupM — the world’s largest media buying agency (a firm that buys ad space for its clients) and member of GARM’s Steer Team — told Spotify it would no longer advertise on the platform for its “disregard for spreading dangerous misinformation,” and Rakowitz seemed to threaten to organize an advertiser boycott of the platform.

In theory, anecdotes like this illustrate GARM’s function: exerting pressure on platforms to ensure its members don’t advertise alongside objectionable content. But in this case, GroupM had no risk of its ads appearing on Rogan’s show: “GroupM does not buy Joe Rogan, and therefore… had no client exposure,” per an email from GroupM Managing Partner included in the report.

Whether a successful 𝕏 lawsuit will have a meaningful positive impact on platforms and websites that defy the regime remains to be seen, and is obviously contingent on a victory in court. Below, a primer on the major players, the claims against them, and how they operate — crucial context for the legal battles to come.

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In 2019, the WFA — a global trade organization that claims its members account for 90% of all global marketing communications spend — established GARM to “address the challenge of harmful content on digital media platforms and its monetization via advertising.” That same year, it became a flagship program of the World Economic Forum. Per WFA’s website, GARM “membership currently includes more than 60 of the world’s biggest advertisers, all six major agency holding companies, seven industry groups, and 10 media platforms.”

Members, which include YouTube, Verizon, Coca-Cola, Nike, McDonald’s, GM, and TikTok, support GARM operations via an annual membership fee and are expected to appoint their own representatives to the coalition. Per the House Judiciary report, GARM’s “board of directors” is its Steer Team, which includes GroupM and several other large corporations that spend billions of dollars annually on advertising.

GARM itself reports to the WFA Executive Committee, the leadership team that governs WFA and oversees all of GARM’s work. This executive team is made up of advertiser associations and marketers from around the world, including China.

WFA’s CEO, Stephan Loerke, himself sits on this board. Last year, he gave an address to WFA member companies urging them to “stay the course” on DEI, calling the trend of companies taking a step back from their diversity initiatives “deeply troubling.”

The House Judiciary report alleges that a critical element of GARM’s work centers around the “uncommon collaboration” — Rakowitz’s term — between its members to “reduce the availability and monetization of harmful content.” That is, instead of competing against each other for customers, members of GARM act as a singular bloc to box out ideologically problematic content and platforms.

An email obtained by the committee also suggests GARM targets companies it finds ideologically problematic by monitoring them until it finds a rationale to place them on its exclusion lists. In October 2021, when Rakowitz and GroupM received an email from a GARM member about The Daily Wire, GroupM responded:

There is an interesting parallel here with Breitbart. Before Breitbart crossed the line and started spouting blatant misinformation, we had long discussions about whether we should include them on our exclusion lists. As much as we hated their ideology and bullshit, we couldn’t really justify blocking them for misguided opinion. We watched them very carefully and it didn’t take long for them to cross the line.

In another email obtained by the Committee, GARM threatened to expel 𝕏 — then Twitter — if it didn’t meet its content moderation demands (though 𝕏 remains on its membership page) following Elon’s acquisition. Said CEO Stephan Loerke in a message to GARM: “We send a detailed lists [sic] of requests and a timeline in writing to Twitter. If they don’t meet those requests in the timeline, GARM expels them.” Without a seat at the table, expulsion would prevent 𝕏 from weighing in on the group’s policies — particularly those that would impact its bottom line.

The Judiciary report also accuses GARM of coordinating an advertiser boycott of X. In October 2022, Rakowitz surveyed members about their views of Elon’s acquisition in the context of a boycott, whose results he presented at a WFA Executive Committee meeting and discussed on a call with GARM members. “[The] results of the survey,” which showed “71% of advertisers and agencies [felt] that change in ownership [would] have a negative or very negative impact on Twitter,” “would have signaled to members to pull their advertising from Twitter... This type of information, coming with the imprimatur of GARM, would give [them] the confidence to pull advertising campaigns without losing out to their competitors.”

Though Rakowitz denies he organized a boycott, he “took credit for Twitter’s revenue decline in internal GARM documents produced to the Committee.”

Soon after the Judiciary Committee report’s release, Elon threatened litigation, which the report suggests is warranted. “Section 1 of the Sherman Act makes unreasonable restraints of trade illegal,” it states. “Documents produced to the Committee suggest that GARM may have engaged in coordinated conduct that violates Section 1.”

Other sites impacted by GARM are pushing back as well — in July, the Daily Wire sent a letter to major corporations asking them to “reject” GARM, which “privately wielded their considerable concentration” of the market to “target and attempt to bankrupt” certain media.

– Riley Nork