garm – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Elon Musk, Who Now Claims Boycotts Are Illegal, Happily Joined The #DeleteFacebook Boycott Himself

from the it's-only-okay-when-we-do-it dept

Elon Musk’s recent claims that corporate boycotts of social media platforms are criminal reek of hypocrisy, given his own eagerness to join the #DeleteFacebook boycott just a few years ago.

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Musk publicly supported the #DeleteFacebook campaign, even going so far as to remove the official SpaceX and Tesla pages from the platform. Yet now, as the owner of ExTwitter, he’s singing a very different tune — suing advertisers who choose to boycott his platform over content moderation concerns.

The blatant double standard is notable, if not surprising. Musk was happy to wield the power of the boycott when it suited his interests and let him mock his rival, Mark Zuckerberg. But now he condemns the tactic as criminal when turned against him. This “rules for thee, but not for me” attitude deserves to be called out even if he and his supporters will happily ignore the rank hypocrisy.

Earlier this year, Elon sued GARM — the “Global Alliance for Responsible Media” — a tiny non-profit that sought to advise brands on how to advertise safely on social media in a manner that (1) wouldn’t tarnish their own brands, and (2) was generally better for the world. GARM had no power and didn’t demand or order any company to do anything. It just worked with advertisers to try to establish some basic standards and to advocate that social media companies try to live up to those basic standards in how they handled moderation.

As we noted, just weeks before Elon sued GARM, ExTwitter had “excitedly” rejoined GARM, knowing that many advertisers trusted its opinion on determining where they should focus their ad spend.

But it seems clear that Elon felt differently. After a very misleading report was put out by Jim Jordan, Elon declared war on GARM and sued a bunch of advertisers. In response, GARM was shut down.

Musk and his friends are now going around saying that participating in an organized boycott of social media is criminal. Right around the time he sued, Musk suggested such a boycott might just be “RICO”:

And, as we just discussed, here’s Musk-backer and friend, Marc Andreessen, claiming that such boycotts are criminal.

However, my cohost on Ctrl-Alt-Speech called out in last episode that Elon Musk himself was quite happy to support a similar boycott not all that long ago.

After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which Facebook data was used to try to influence voters to vote for Donald Trump (yes, this is ironic, given what Elon did with ExTwitter), some activists kicked off a boycott campaign called #DeleteFacebook.

Elon Musk showed some interest in the campaign by joking to someone “What’s Facebook?” in response to a (now deleted) tweet about the campaign. Some users then challenged him to join the #DeleteFacebook campaign by removing the SpaceX and Tesla accounts from Facebook, which he did.

As far as I can tell, to this day, there are no official, verified Tesla or SpaceX pages on Facebook.

Years later, after he had taken over Twitter, Elon even mocked Facebook for “caving” to the very boycott that he participated in himself.

Musk’s brazen hypocrisy on boycotts is just the latest example of his free speech double standard. He delights in wielding his immense power and influence to mock, criticize and yes, boycott those he disagrees with. But the moment anyone turns those same tactics against him, he cries foul and literally makes a federal case out of it.

This kind of self-serving double standard is corrosive to public discourse and the principles of free speech that Musk claims to hold so dear. While he and his supporters will almost certainly choose to ignore the stench of hypocrisy, the rest of us shouldn’t. Musk’s boycott hypocrisy deserves to be dragged out into the light again and again for everyone else to recognize.

Filed Under: boycotts, delete facebook, elon musk, hypocrisy
Companies: facebook, garm, meta, twitter, x

Ad Execs Speak Out: Musk’s Lawsuit Makes ExTwitter Even Less Appealing

from the it's-totally-on-you-elon dept

Would you believe that Elon suing former advertisers for no longer advertising on ExTwitter isn’t magically making advertisers want to come back and is, instead, driving them further away?

A quick timeline:

• In November of last year, Elon Musk told advertisers to go fuck themselves if they were upset about content on ExTwitter. This was after the site had already lost a ton of advertisers mostly due to Elon’s own penchant for sharing ignorant, bigoted nonsense, which made advertisers feel unsafe to have their brands associated with Musk.
• On July 1st, ExTwitter “excitedly” rejoined GARM, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, announcing they were “proud” to work with GARM to make sure that brands felt safe on the site formerly known as Twitter. They timed this to line up with the big Cannes Lions festival, which is where a ton of important advertising deals are generally locked up. ExTwitter seemed to feel it needed to do this to get advertisers to trust the platform again.
• On July 10th, Jim Jordan released a typically misleading report accusing GARM of colluding to cut off funding from conservative media, including Elon’s ExTwitter. Elon then announced he would be suing GARM, the same organization his company excitedly rejoined a week earlier.
• On August 1st, Jim Jordan sent letters to a long list of advertisers demanding to know why they won’t advertise on Trumpist media sites, which is frankly none of his fucking business.
• On August 6th, Elon followed through on his threat and had ExTwitter sue GARM, the World Federation of Advertisers (the body that created GARM), and some of the biggest brand companies in the world (CVS, Mars, Orsted, Unilever).
• On August 8th, GARM (which was a two-person non-profit) announced it was shutting down, noting that it simply did not have the resources to fight the lawsuit, which would likely cost many times over GARM’s operating budget.

Many people, quite reasonably, called out the absolute absurdity of Elon basically suing advertisers for not wanting to advertise on his site. However, I saw plenty of people suggest that there was a long-term strategy here, and that by suing, he was making sure that future attempts to pull advertising from the site would be more limited in power.

You know, just like how a bunch of silly people keep thinking that Donald Trump is somehow playing 4D chess, when the man wouldn’t know a chess board from a Ouija board.

This week, CEO-in-title-only Linda Yaccarino gave another one of her word salad interviews to the friendly NY Post. She insisted this wasn’t about punishing advertisers for refusing to advertise, but about “fixing a broken ad ecosystem.”

“We were victimized by a small group of people pushing their authority or ability to monopolize what gets monetized,” Yaccarino said.

“GARM was just a symptom, but [finding] the root cause of the entire ecosystem being broken, that’s what the suit is about.”

And, I mean, Yaccarino used to be a top ad exec at NBCUniversal. She has to know that what she’s saying is obvious bullshit. She has to know that none of her former colleagues will buy any of it. ExTwitter was not “victimized by a small group of people pushing their authority.” ExTwitter was “victimized” by a very rich owner who doesn’t understand some of the fundamentals of advertising and how things work. He personally drove billions of dollars worth of advertising away.

Yaccarino could have taken the honest position and just said “look, everyone knows that we’ve driven away advertisers and deliberately decided to make X a platform that is unsafe for brands, but that’s the position Elon has taken because he thinks it’s better for free speech.” It would still be stupid, but at least it would be accurate.

There is no “root cause” of the system being broken here. The “broken” part is the guy who massively overpaid for Twitter, fired all the people who understood how stuff works, and then wrongly insisted that “free speech” meant he had to enable the worst people on the planet to be assholes on his platform (and personally retweet many of them) and then play the victim when advertisers took a look and decided “there are better places to put our money.”

So, anyway, as for “fixing the root cause” and how this lawsuit was a part of a “long game” to keep advertisers on ExTwitter? Yeah, that’s not working. City A.M. has an article in which they talk to various advertising execs whose response is, more or less, this makes us way less interested in ever advertising on anything Elon is connected to.

But rather than scare brands into submission, bosses in the media industry told City A.M. that the move – which was variously described as “ego-driven”, “cult-like” and “insane” – is only likely to push already disillusioned brands further away from the ad spend-reliant site.

Alex Tait, the founder of media and marketing agency Entropy, and who previously led Unilever’s ad spending strategy, said: “Musk’s lawsuit is likely driven by his ego rather than commercial logic.”

And it’s not because of GARM. It’s not because of collusion. It’s not got anything to do with being woke or about ideology at all. It’s because it’s fucking crazy and no advertising exec wants to deal with the headaches Elon brings:

Joseph Teaside, head of tech at media analyst Enders Analysis, said: “Advertisers just don’t want the drama…

“[They] have already left in droves as X has been overrun by bots, racists and pornography since the Musk takeover. Some have stuck around or come back, tempted by low CPMs, but scandal after scandal is convincing large advertisers that it’s just not worth the hassle.”

It’s just not worth dealing with the mess.

Also, all the old reasons it made sense to advertise on Twitter are basically gone:

Meanwhile Alex Wilson, a senior strategist at London agency Pitch, told City A.M. that whereas pre-Musk Twitter was once a good avenue for brands to insert themselves into the biggest conversations, its unregulated nature has made it hard for to convince his clients to part way with money on the site.

“The great salespeople was have left, the verification system is a mess, half your followers are now sexbots, the most interesting people have moved somewhere else, the people still there are posting less, and your timeline is just and endless stream of misery.

“How do you make the case for advertising on a platform like that?”

So, Elon and Linda, maybe it’s time to take a good look in the mirror. It’s not the ad ecosystem that is broken here. The problem is you. You guys fucked up.

And no lawsuit is going to change that.

Filed Under: advertising, brand safety, elon musk, garm, linda yaccarino, slapp suits
Companies: garm, twitter, wfa, x

Surprise: Judge Recuses Himself From Elon Musk’s GARM SLAPP Suit

from the did-not-see-that-coming dept

Elon Musk’s legal team probably thought they had the perfect strategy: file a SLAPP suit in a court with a judge known for partisan rulings, including rulings benefiting Elon himself in the past. But they didn’t count on one thing – the judge recusing himself.

Last week, Elon sued GARM and the others, claiming that it was an antitrust violation for them to organize a boycott against putting ads on Twitter. There was no evidence presented of any such boycott. Instead, there was evidence that GARM had recommended that advertisers be careful about how it might look if their brand ads appeared next to awful content.

However, we had worried that Elon filed it in the Wichita Falls division of the Northern District of Texas federal courts, knowing it was guaranteed to be assigned to Judge Reed O’Connor. O’Connor is known as a “go-to judge” for all sorts of partisan pro-GOP nonsense. And, Elon already has a case in front of him with his SLAPP suit against Media Matters.

In that case, O’Connor refused to toss it out early (when it obviously should have been). Just recently, Media Matters had requested that ExTwitter have to file an amended statement of interested parties, to indicate that Tesla is an interested party, noting that Judge O’Connor appears to own a significant number of Tesla shares. ExTwitter has insisted that Tesla is unrelated to the case while Media Matters has responded by pointing out how ridiculous that is. Judge O’Connor has not yet ruled on that issue in that case.

However, this morning, he announced that he was recusing himself from this new case and told the clerk to reassign it to another judge.

It’s unclear why (and we may never know the official reason, though how he rules on the Media Matters request may give us some clue).

That said, GARM has already announced that it was shutting down. It’s also possible that the case still gets assigned to a different terrible judge in Texas. Or that the 5th Circuit does what it normally does on appeals and ignores basically all legal history.

But, for a brief moment, Judge O’Connor has done the right thing and recused himself from a case in which the media was already highlighting the very real appearance of bias.

Update: As a few people have pointed out, it appears that O’Connor owns some Unilever stock, and that’s one of the defendants in the case, which could explain things.

Filed Under: elon musk, garm, recusal, reed o'connor, slapp suits, texas
Companies: garm, twitter, wfa, world federation of advertisers, x

Jim Jordan & Elon Musk Suppressed Speech; Don’t Let Them Pretend It’s A Win For Free Speech

from the that's-the-opposite-of-free-speech dept

Up is down, left is right, day is night. And now, to Jim Jordan and Elon Musk, clear, direct government censorship is, apparently, “free speech.”

This isn’t a huge surprise, but on Thursday, the World Federation of Advertising shut down GARM, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, in response to legal threats from ExTwitter and Rumble, and a bullshit Congressional investigation led by Jim Jordan.

As we have detailed, GARM was setup following the mosque shootings in New Zealand, which was livestreamed. Brand advertisers were accused (arguably unfairly) of profiting off of such things, so they put together this alliance to share information about best practices on social media advertising for brand safety.

GARM was specifically a way for advertisers to set up those best practices, share them with each other, but also to share them with social media sites, to say “hey, this is the kind of trust & safety processes we expect if we’re going to advertise.”

I disagreed with GARM about lots of things, but in a free market, where there is free speech, they should absolutely be allowed to create best practices and to talk with platforms and advertisers and advocate for better trust & safety practices in order for brands to feel safe that their ads won’t show up next to dangerous content.

All of it was entirely voluntary. Advertisers didn’t have to abide by the standards, nor did platforms. This was literally just part of the marketplace of ideas. Some advertisers advocated for efforts to be made to protect their brand safety, and some platforms agreed while others, like Rumble, did not.

All GARM was at its core was advertisers using their own freedom of expression and rights of association to try to put some pressure on platforms to be better stewards, so that advertisers weren’t putting their brands at risk. You can (perhaps reasonably!) argue that they pushed too hard, or some of their requests were unreasonable, but it’s their free speech rights.

As we’ve detailed over the last month, ExTwitter had regularly used GARM’s standards to try to convince advertisers they were “safe” and officially “excitedly” rejoined GARM as a member just last month. A few days later, Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee released a blisteringly stupid and misleading report, falsely claiming that GARM was engaged in antitrust-violating collusion to punish conservative media. None of that was ever true.

However, Elon announced that he would be suing GARM and hoped that criminal charges would be filed against GARM, perhaps not realizing his own organization had rejoined GARM a week earlier and touted that relationship in its effort to attract advertisers. Earlier this week, he carried through on that plan and sued GARM for alleged antitrust violations.

The lawsuit is absolutely ridiculous. It assumes that because GARM, at times, criticized Elon’s handling of trust & safety issues, that was a form of collusion that abused its monopoly position to get advertisers to stop advertising on ExTwitter.

It is one of the most entitled, spoiled brat kind of lawsuits you’ll ever see. Not only does it seem to suggest that not advertising on ExTwitter is an antitrust violation, it assumes that the only reason that advertisers would remove their ads from the site was not due to any actions by the company or Elon_,_ but rather that it must be because GARM organized a boycott (which, notably, none of the evidence shows they did). One thing is quite clear from all this: Elon seems incapable of recognizing that the consequences of his own actions fall on him. He insists it must be everyone else’s fault.

Indeed, the sense of entitlement shines through from those involved in this whole process.

For example, Rumble’s CEO Chris Pavlovski more or less admitted that if you turn him down when he asks companies to advertise, you would now get sued. The sheer, unadulterated entitlement on display here is incredible:

Rumble had sued GARM alongside ExTwitter, using some of the same lawyers that Elon did. When tweeting out the details to prove that these advertisers should be added to his lawsuit, Pavlovski only showed perfectly friendly emails from companies saying “hey, look, advertising on your site won’t be good for our reputation, sorry.”

That’s not illegal. It’s not collusion. It’s the marketplace of ideas saying “hey, we don’t want to associate with you.” But, according to Rumble, that alone deserves a lawsuit.

Anyway, the World Federation of Advertisers has apparently given in to this lawfare from Elon and Jim Jordan and announced on Thursday that they were shutting down GARM because of all of this.

In other words, Elon, Jordan, and others have used the power of the state, both in the form of lawsuits and congressional investigations, to browbeat advertisers into no longer speaking up about ways to keep social media sites safe for their brands.

This is the exact opposite of free speech. It’s literally using the power of the state to shut up companies which were expressing views that Elon and Jordan didn’t like.

And, so, of course, they and their fans are celebrating this state-backed censorship as a “win for free speech.” It’s ridiculously Orwellian.

This is not a “win” for the First Amendment in any way. It is, in every way, the opposite. The House Judiciary Committee, under Jim Jordan, abused the power of the state to shut up companies from talking about which sites they felt were safe for brands or what those sites could do to be better.

And, of course, a bunch of other very foolish people repeated more of this kind of nonsense, including some of MAGA’s favorite journalists, who pretend to support free speech. Ben Shapiro called it an “important win for free speech principles,” which is just disconnected from reality.

Linda Yaccarino claims it proves that “no small group should be able to monopolize what gets monetized.” This makes no sense at all. No small group monopolized anything. They just tried to put in place some basic best practices to protect their brands and no one had to agree with them at all (and many didn’t).

And if Linda or Elon thinks this will magically make advertisers want to come back to ExTwitter, they’re even more delusional than I thought. Who would ever want to advertise on a platform that sued advertisers for leaving?

Filed Under: 1st amendment, advertising, antitrust, best practices, censorship, elon musk, entitlement, free speech, garm, jim jordan
Companies: garm, rumble, twitter, wfa, world federation of advertisers, x

It Always Gets Dumber: Elon Sues The Ad Coalition He Just Rejoined Because He Thinks It’s Illegal To Not Advertise On ExTwitter

from the the-hypocrisy-files dept

Remember when Elon told advertisers not to advertise on ExTwitter? Remember how he told them to “go fuck” themselves? Well, now he’s suing those companies for the serious crime (he claims it might be RICO) of not wanting to advertise on his site.

Oh, and it’s even dumber than that. Because, as we detailed, just a month earlier, ExTwitter “excitedly” announced how “proud” it was to rejoin the industry coalition that Elon is now suing. And apparently, they’re staying in as a part of that coalition.

But, wait, let’s back up a bit. There’s so much stupid here that it’s easy to get ahead of ourselves.

GARM is the Global Alliance for Responsible Media. It was set up by the World Federation of Advertisers in response to the horrifying mosque shooting in Christchurch, in which the killer livestreamed the attack. Around this time, the media started pointing out (sometimes fairly, though often not very fairly) that when bad stuff showed up online (terrorism, CSAM, hate) it often showed up next to big brand advertisements.

Advertisers recognized that it would do damage to their brands to keep having ads show up in that way, and they set up GARM as a way in which advertisers and social media companies might try to create some basic frameworks to minimize such a risk for advertisers. It basically creates some standards and best practices for both advertisers and social networks to do with it as they see fit (nothing is required at all).

Next up, Elon announced a plan to purchase Twitter for $44 billion claiming it was to support free speech. Then he immediately regretted it and tried to back out of the deal. When that was clearly going to fail (in spectacularly embarrassing ways), Elon switched gears and said he’d go through with the deal.

Since Elon’s conception of “free speech” from the beginning has basically been “obnoxious speech I like is protected, but speech I dislike is not,” many advertisers decided to hold back on their ad spend to protect their brands. This turned out to be wise for a variety of reasons.

The company would then swing back and forth with CEO-in-name-only Linda Yaccarino wooing advertisers to come back to the platform, only to have Elon do something stupid and push them away again.

Early on in Elon’s tenure, he got into a bit of a war of words with folks associated with GARM after they merely asked him for details of how he would deal with hate speech on the platform. At some point after taking the company over, Elon took Twitter out of GARM. However, whenever the company wanted to cozy up to advertisers, they would tout how they would comply with GARM standards.

Twitter did that in January of 2023 and again in June of 2023.

But, of course, Elon would continually fuck things up. In November of 2023, he did so by going on stage at the Dealbook conference and telling advertisers to “go fuck yourself.” He also told them “don’t advertise.”

It appears many advertisers took him up on the latter offer again (no idea if they took him up on the former offer), making life difficult for the business side in which the company has to try to attract advertisers.

Then, just last month, ExTwitter announced that it had “excitedly” rejoined GARM. Note the date on the tweet (which is still up):

A week later, Rep. Jim Jordan (as he is known to do) released a very stupid, misleading report, claiming that GARM was an antitrust violation and that it was pressuring advertisers not to advertise on conservative media. Elon, who seemed unaware that days earlier his own company had excitedly announced it was rejoining GARM, announced that he would sue GARM and its “collaborators” over their decisions not to advertise on ExTwitter.

So, basically a week after rejoining GARM “excitedly,” “free speech absolutist” Elon announced that he would be suing GARM for using their speech to tell advertisers how best to keep their brands safe, which meant that some of them chose not to advertise on ExTwitter.

And, this week, he went through with it. Even though X is a Nevada company headquartered (for the time being) in California (though with plans to move to Texas) and WFA is a Belgian non-profit with US offices in New York, Elon sued in Texas. And not just any Texas court, but the Northern District of Texas, Wichita Falls Division, where they were guaranteed to get judge Reed O’Connor, who is already hearing Elon’s SLAPP suit against Media Matters (and has already been siding with Elon despite the ridiculousness of the case).

The complaint argues that GARM and its advertising partners are engaging in antitrust behavior in convincing advertisers not to advertise on ExTwitter. But there’s quite strong precedent at the Supreme Court that says that economic boycotts related to lawful expression are protected under the First Amendment. The only cases when that’s not true is if they’re advocating for something illegal (which didn’t happen here) or the boycott is not for any legitimate purpose, but to kill a competitor.

The complaint is nonsense in so many ways, including the false claim that GARM “forces” social media companies to adhere to its standards. But that’s not true. Social media companies can choose to adopt those standards or not (and how). And, at the same time, the advertisers who are members of GARM get to choose whether or not they want to advertise on platforms that don’t adhere to those standards. No one is forced to do anything.

And, remember, Elon literally told advertisers who were concerned about these issues on ExTwitter not to advertise.

The exhibits in the complaint show a bunch of emails that repeatedly (though contrary to how they’re described in the complaint) show that GARM just acts as a facilitation organization, and advertisers all get to make up their own minds on how to deal with things.

I mean, literally in one of the exhibits, an advertiser is asking GARM’s lead, Rob Rakowitz, what to do about Twitter, and Rakowitz tells the advertiser “you may want to connect with Twitter directly to understand their progress on brand safety and make your own decisions.” That email starts out with him telling the advertiser pretty explicitly that GARM doesn’t make recommendations, and that such decisions are “completely within the sphere of each member and subject to their own discretion.”

So, the evidence that ExTwitter itself has submitted debunks the entire argument of the case. In the complaint, ExTwitter tries to play this off as GARM trying to cover its tracks after Jim Jordan had launched his investigation.

But none of this should matter. The entire crux of the case is the ridiculous belief that advertisers have no right to pull their advertisements from Twitter.

In announcing the lawsuit, Linda Yaccarino put out a laughably stupid video in which she (1) wore a necklace that said “free speech” and (2) argued that not advertising on ExTwitter was an attack on free speech (and, hilariously, on ExTwitter’s users). I mean, you can’t make this shit up:

These organizations targeted our company, and you, our users. The evidence and facts are on our side. They conspired to boycott X, which threatens our ability to thrive in the future. That puts your global town square — the one place that you can express yourself freely and openly — at long term risk. People are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is restricted.

I mean, what? Deciding not to give Elon money is somehow an attack on users of ExTwitter? Did anyone with half a brain read this through? The marketplace has rejected your terrible understanding of trust & safety, and advertisers (and users) have gone elsewhere. That’s free speech and the free market in action.

There’s no requirement that anyone advertise on your terrible platform.

And no, ExTwitter is not “the one place that you can express yourself freely and openly.” That’s the wider internet. There are many places that allow people to express themselves freely and openly, while ExTwitter has shown a frequent willingness to remove content that Elon dislikes.

Free speech rights include freedom to not associate with someone, and that’s all advertisers are doing. If the marketplace isn’t accepting of that, then, well, that’s the marketplace telling you your ideas suck.

Meanwhile, Elon continues to argue that this is not just a civil matter, but a criminal one, pretending that this might be a RICO Act violation.

Seems like as good a time as any to point to an archived version of Ken White’s (unfortunately no longer online) lawsplainer on why it’s not RICO, dammit. In this case, it is especially not RICO.

Again, it needs to be clear what’s going on here. Elon Musk told advertisers to go fuck themselves and not advertise. Many of them did so. A few of them reached out to GARM to see what people there thought about advertising on Twitter, but no official recommendations were ever made.

And somehow, that’s RICO? Or an antitrust violation?

Meanwhile, at least one other wannabe company has joined Elon in this stupid, anti-free speech crusade. Rumble, the “what if YouTube, but for assholes,” video streaming company also sued. In the same court. With the same lawyer.

The Rumble lawsuit may be even dumber. The company admits that it doesn’t care about protecting the brand safety of advertisers:

Rumble has chosen not to implement monetization policies that are based on GARM’s preferred brand safety standards. Because of this, Rumble forgoes spending significant resources on brand safety efforts, which allows it to offer advertising space at a lower price than other platforms that do invest resources in complying with restrictive brand safety standards.

It presents no evidence that GARM did anything with regard to Rumble, but just whines that whenever it’s spoken to GARM members, none of them ever decide to advertise.

Rumble has made multiple attempts to form a commercial relationship with GroupM over the years but has never received a meaningful response. In 2023 and 2024 alone, multiple members of Rumble’s sales team sent emails to GroupM seeking to have GroupM purchase advertisements on Rumble’s platform, but GroupM refused to engage with Rumble’s outreach beyond a single meeting that GroupM ended without any follow-up.

On multiple occasions since GARM’s founding, Rumble has opened a dialogue with advertisers and ad tech providers that are GARM members with the intent of selling advertisement inventory to new customers. Despite many productive early conversations, the GARM members eventually declined to purchase advertisements on Rumble.

Must be a conspiracy, huh? And not the fact that Rumble likes to platform terrible people with embarrassingly stupid views, which most brand advertisers don’t want to be within 100 yards of supporting?

The sheer entitlement of these fuckers.

Look, there are a lot of companies that don’t want to advertise with Techdirt. For one, we say things like “these fuckers.” Also, we regularly criticize companies for doing stupid shit. So, I get it. We once had a conversation with a large advertising firm that thought they would get a big telecom company to advertise on Techdirt. They then sent us an example of us trashing that company and said “I’m afraid they won’t be interested.” Fair enough.

I get why companies don’t want to advertise here, and I’m not so entitled to think I’m owed their money or that there’s some conspiracy against us.

But somehow Elon, Linda, and whoever is behind Rumble seem to think the opposite. They think that they are magically owed advertising dollars.

And, really, at this point, any advertiser would have to be absolutely crazy to keep advertising on ExTwitter. Musk and Yaccarino are saying quite clearly that stopping advertising could lead to a lawsuit. Somehow you owe it to keep advertising forever or it’s a criminal attack on ExTwitter’s ability to thrive, which apparently is guaranteed by law.

But, of course, this case might actually succeed, given that it’s in Reed O’Connor’s court, and within the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit appeals court. I fear what such a world would look like. It’s certainly not one where free speech is supported, because any such forced association is an attack on free speech. Any such concept that says that certain platforms are magically owed support is not about freedom. It’s about blatant attacks on fundamental freedoms.

Oh, and just as a final kicker, despite Yaccarino claiming that GARM was somehow a threat to all that is good and holy, she told staff today that ExTwitter remains a member of GARM as per their agreement to rejoin last month.

Filed Under: advertising, antitrust, boycotts, brand safety, elon musk, garm, linda yaccarino, rico
Companies: garm, rumble, twitter, wfa, x

Jim Jordan Demands Advertisers Explain Why They Don’t Advertise On MAGA Media Sites

from the free-speech-absolutist-says-what? dept

Remember last month when ExTwitter excitedly “rejoined GARM” (the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, an advertising consortium focused on brand safety)? And then, a week later, after Rep. Jim Jordan released a misleading report about GARM, Elon Musk said he was going to sue GARM and hoped criminal investigations would be opened?

Unsurprisingly, Jordan has now ratcheted things up a notch by sending investigative demands to a long list of top advertisers associated with GARM. The letter effectively accuses these advertisers of antitrust violations for choosing not to advertise on conservative media sites, based on GARM’s recommendations on how to best protect brand safety.

The link there shows all the letters, but we’ll just stick with the first one, to Adidas. The letter doesn’t make any demands specifically about ExTwitter, but does name the GOP’s favorite media sites, and demands to know whether any of these advertisers agreed not to advertise on those properties. In short, this is an elected official demanding to know why a private company chose not to give money to media sites that support that elected official:

Was Adidas Group aware of the coordinated actions taken by GARM toward news outlets and podcasts such as The Joe Rogan Experience, The Daily Wire, Breitbart News, or Fox News, or other conservative media? Does Adidas Group support GARM’s coordinated actions toward these news outlets and podcasts?

Jordan is also demanding all sorts of documents and answers to questions. He is suggesting strongly that GARM’s actions (presenting ways that advertisers might avoid, say, having their brands show up next to neo-Nazi content) were a violation of antitrust law.

This is all nonsense. First of all, choosing not to advertise somewhere is protected by the First Amendment. And there are good fucking reasons not to advertise on media properties most closely associated with nonsense peddling, extremist culture wars, and just general stupidity.

Even more ridiculous is that the letter cites NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware, which is literally the Supreme Court case that establishes that group boycotts are protected speech. It’s the case that says not supporting a business for the purpose of protest, while economic activity, is still protected speech and can’t be regulated by the government (and it’s arguable that what does GARM does is even a boycott at all).

As the Court noted, in holding that organizing a boycott was protected by the First Amendment:

The First Amendment similarly restricts the ability of the State to impose liability on an individual solely because of his association with another.

But, of course, one person who is quite excited is Elon Musk. He quote tweeted (they’re still tweets, right?) the House Judiciary’s announcement of the demands with a popcorn emoji:

So, yeah. Mr. “Free Speech Absolutist,” who claims the Twitter files show unfair attempts by governments to influence speech, now supports the government trying to pressure brands into advertising on certain media properties. It’s funny how the “free speech absolutist” keeps throwing the basic, fundamental principles of free speech out the window the second he doesn’t like the results.

That’s not supporting free speech at all. But, then again, for Elon to support free speech, he’d first have to learn what it means, and he’s shown no inclination of ever doing that.

Filed Under: advertising, antitrust, boycotts, brand safety, elon musk, garm, jim jordan
Companies: adidas, fox news, garm, twitter, x

Elon Says ExTwitter Will Sue The Group ExTwitter ‘Excitedly’ Joined Just Last Week

from the timing-is-everything dept

Elon Musk’s ExTwitter just set a new speed record: from enthusiastic joiner of an advertising coalition to potential plaintiff against the same organization in just over a week.

Sometimes, timing is everything.

This week has been a travel week for me, so on Tuesday evening, I wrote up a short article on last week’s news that ExTwitter had “rejoined GARM.” GARM is the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, which is a loose coalition focused on brand safety for advertisers, such that their ads are less likely to appear next to, say, neo-Nazi content.

The main focus of my post was that there was almost no way that anyone should believe that ExTwitter’s decision to rejoin GARM was a sincere statement that ExTwitter would now take brand safety and GARM’s recommendations seriously. Instead, I noted that whenever ExTwitter was desperate for advertisers to sign on, its advertising execs (Linda Yaccarino’s underlings) would tout its compliance with GARM guidelines. But then Elon would do something fucking crazy and drive away advertisers again.

I even predicted, “sooner or later (probably sooner) Elon will do something horrible…” I should have known that it would happen so soon that it was before I could even post my article.

Anyway, I wrote that Tuesday evening and scheduled it to go up on Techdirt on Thursday afternoon, since I’d be traveling and without internet access for large segments of time this week.

Little did I know that on Wednesday, before my post went up, Jim Jordan and the House Judiciary would release an astoundingly stupid “report” claiming that GARM was an antitrust-violating cartel that was pressuring websites into censoring conservatives.

And, in response to a tweet showing just a clip of some nonsense testimony at the House hearing about this report, Elon Musk announced on Thursday morning (before my post went up) that ExTwitter “has no choice but to file suit against the perpetrators and collaborators” (meaning GARM, its organizers, and its members) and also said that “hopefully, some states will consider criminal prosecution.”

Yes, that’s Elon Musk saying that he plans to file a civil lawsuit against GARM and its “collaborators” and hopes that state AGs will file criminal lawsuits against the very organization HIS COMPANY REJOINED JUST A WEEK EARLIER and celebrated with a hyped-up tweet:

So, last week ExTwitter was “excited to announce” that it’s rejoined GARM, and this week Elon says that GARM’s leaders should be criminally prosecuted, and he planned to sue them himself.

Cool, cool.

I can just imagine how Linda Yaccarino must feel about this. She clearly orchestrated the return to GARM as part of her desperate push to lure back advertisers.

But let’s be clear about this. Companies have their own First Amendment rights not to associate with anyone they want. And that includes not advertising on websites where your ads might show up next to controversial content, disinformation, or just general nonsense. Many companies recognize that it is bad for business to have advertisements showing up next to neo-Nazi content, or just plain old disinformation.

Private companies choosing not to advertise is not a violation of any law, civil or criminal. Private organizations setting up guidelines for brand safety is not an antitrust violation. Private organizations choosing not to advertise on the site formerly known as Twitter is an expression of their own First Amendment rights not to associate with whatever nonsense Elon is promoting these days.

Anyway, all that effort that Yaccarino put into “rejoining GARM” last week just went up in smoke. She was trying to convince advertisers that ExTwitter was a safe place for brand advertising, but now Elon is saying ExTwitter will be suing GARM and pushing for criminal prosecutions of everyone involved in GARM.

Which now includes Elon Musk’s ExTwitter as of last week. Can’t wait to see Elon sue himself.

What a clusterfuck of stupidity.

And I’m sure that it won’t be long before an Andrew Bailey of Missouri or a Ken Paxton of Texas opens an “investigation” into GARM (the group that Elon Musk’s company “excitedly” rejoined just last week).

Hilariously, this would be an actual First Amendment violation, in that it would be a government agency starting a criminal investigation for the pretty clear express purpose of intimidating companies out of expressing themselves.

Remember when Elon said he was against governments pressuring companies about their speech? Now he’s telling them to do that, but just to organizations he doesn’t like (even though his own company just joined the very same organization).

So, just to recap: last week, Elon’s company rejoined GARM, the advertising coalition to help make sure platforms are a safe place for brand advertisers to advertise. This week, the House Judiciary Committee falsely claimed that the First Amendment-protected rights of companies not to advertise on ExTwitter was an antitrust violation, leading to “First Amendment absolutist” Elon Musk saying he’s going to sue the very organization his company just “excitedly” joined. And, to top it all off, Elon hopes that states will open criminal investigations into this activity — an act that would actually violate the First Amendment rights of GARM and those involved with it. Which includes Elon Musk’s own company.

I should have stayed off the internet even longer.

Filed Under: advertisers, advertising, boycott, brand safety, elon musk, free speech, garm, house judiciary committee, jim jordan
Companies: garm, twitter, wfa, x

Fool Me Thrice: ExTwitter’s Empty Brand Safety Promises

from the go-fuck-yourselves dept

The famous line is “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” But what do you call it when Elon Musk fools advertisers over and over again into believing that ExTwitter will protect their brand safety, despite making it clear that he has no interest in doing so?

At this point, no advertiser can seriously believe that Elon Musk’s ExTwitter will protect the brand safety of its advertisers. I mean, this is literally the guy who told advertisers to “go fuck themselves” after some pulled their advertisements following one of Elon’s many ridiculous comments (as well as evidence of ads appearing next to neo-Nazi content).

But, at the recent Cannes Lion advertising festival, Elon and Linda Yaccarino tried to play nice with advertisers. They announced that ExTwitter was rejoining the World Federation of Advertisers’ (WFA) Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).

After drifting from the World Federation of Advertisers’ (WFA) Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) when Elon Musk took over Twitter, the social platform now known as X has decided to rejoin the coalition of online providers and brand partners, working to uphold the group’s brand-safety requirements and potentially win back advertisers.

“We’re excited to announce that X has reinstated our relationship with the @wfamarketers Global Alliance for Responsible Media,” the social media company posted on its platform Monday, adding that “X is committed to the safety of our global town square and proud to be part of the GARM community.”

The problem with this announcement, though, is that basically every time ExTwitter is desperate for advertisers to buy some ads, it touts GARM compliance, but then Elon goes on some antisemitic rant, or yet another study comes out showing what a terrible job ExTwitter does in protecting brand safety, and the promises of GARM compliance are forgotten.

Why is this time any different?

Some history: soon after Elon completed the purchase of Twitter, GARM had issued an open letter to Elon about making sure he was committed to brand safety.

At the time, Elon insisted the company’s “commitment to brand safety” was unchanged. He met with GARM folks, and promised to uphold the guidelines.

A few months later, the company announced a new brand safety effort, compliant with GARM.

But, largely due to Elon’s own nonsense (and misunderstanding of free speech), he keeps going back on those promises and personally driving advertisers away.

And each time the company gets desperate for new advertisers, it tries to claim it’s supportive of the GARM approach to “brand safety” for advertisers.

Indeed, at last year’s Cannes Lion, the company also talked about its GARM compliance. That was just months before Elon told advertisers to go fuck themselves, and multiple reports showed that big brand advertisers were showing up next to some pretty horrific content.

So it’s not even clear what is meant by ExTwitter “rejoining” GARM. The company keeps touting GARM as its standard anyway over the last few years, and then totally failing to live up to those promises, mostly due to their own owner’s behavior and desire to appease the worst people in society.

Any advertiser who thinks this newly constituted relationship with GARM means literally anything for brand safety is too gullible to be left alone with an advertisement. It’s all for show. Sooner or later (probably sooner) Elon will do something horrible and/or another study will come out showing how badly the company protects the brand safety of its advertisers.

It’s happened before. It’ll happen again. And rebuilding a relationship with GARM is just window dressing.

Filed Under: advertisers, brand safety, elon musk, garm, promises
Companies: garm, twitter, wfa, x