Twitter today sued the World Federation of Advertisers, whose members are said to control about 90 percent of global marketing spend, for cutting back their ads on the social network - or in most cases pulling them entirely.

The complaint, filed in a federal district court in northern Texas, alleges [PDF] that the federation and individual advertisers, including CVS, Mars, and Unilever, unlawfully colluded in deciding to no longer book ad space on the Elon Musk-run site.

Twitter - now known as X, and claims to be popular with more than 500 million active users a month - reckons the corporations' boycott breaks US antitrust law.

"The defendants conspired, along with dozens of non-defendant co-conspirators, to collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue from Twitter," the lawsuit states, which is demanding trebled compensatory damages from lost revenue and court orders to ban such practices in the future.

The legal action centers on the federation's Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) body, and specifically its so-called brand safety standards. Websites and apps must comply with those corp-friendly rules to get ad bookings from federation members, according to X. These requirements cover things like ensuring adverts aren't seen next to or are associated with hate speech, violent extremism, and child exploitation.

Twitter was compliant with these standards, though after it was bought by Musk in October 2022, GARM took a much tougher line against the biz, it's claimed. Indeed, by November that year, brands were being advised to give the social network a wide berth as, amid what appeared to be an uptick of abuse by trolls under the site's new anti-woke management, Twitter was deemed to no longer be a "safe" place for businesses to be associated with.

According to the lawsuit, the advertising federation voiced concerns about the social network's ability or willingness to stick to the brand safety requirements, which X argues was a way to get advertisers to pull out of the site without the trade body explicitly telling them to.

The federation "triggered the boycott of Twitter through public statements of its concerns with Twitter’s continued compliance with the GARM Brand Safety Standards," as the lawsuit put it, adding X is upset the industry body tried to force the social network to follow the rules. The global federation "organized an advertiser boycott of Twitter through GARM, with the goal of coercing Twitter to comply with the GARM Brand Safety Standards to the satisfaction of GARM," it was claimed.

Senior Twitter execs, including Musk, twice met GARM reps in November and December in 2022 and agreed to make changes to the platform. The Musketeers claim that, despite the biz now complying with GARM's requirements "99 percent" of the time, two years on the boycott remains in place.

Naturally, Xitter is also treating this walk-out by advertisers as a free speech issue. Businesses exercising their free speech rights of where they spread their marketing message is bad, but other speech is essential, is one way to interpret this lawsuit.

"People are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is undermined and some viewpoints are not funded over others as part of an illegal boycott. This behavior is a stain on a great industry, and cannot be allowed to continue," said X CEO Linda Yaccarino.

"To those who broke the law, we say enough is enough. We are compelled to seek justice for the harm that has been done by these and potentially additional defendants, depending what the legal process reveals."

Yaccarino cited on X an interim committee staff report into GARM from the US House Judiciary Committee, which concluded [PDF] the alliance's operation "is likely illegal under the antitrust laws and threatens fundamental American freedoms.” The House met GARM executives and subpoenaed emails for the report.

"We tried being nice for two years and got nothing but empty words," X CEO Elon Musk added on Tuesday. "Now, it is war."

So far the lawsuit offers six pieces of evidence, which are mainly internal emails between GARM members and advertising agencies. According to Yaccarino these show that the group was advising clients which platforms to advertise on in a collusive fashion, thus allegedly breaking antitrust laws.

Exhibit F, for example, covers a discussion from Danish energy giant Orsted asking a member of the GARM team if it was still safe to advertise on Elon's site, adding: "Based on your recommendations, we have stopped all paid advertisements."

A GARM staffer responds: "I would like to clarify that neither GARM, nor WFA, have ever made any recommendation, or proposed any action, in relation to advertiser investments on Twitter. Media investment decisions are completely within the sphere of each member and subject to their own discretion," adding that Twitter had made some improvements to content moderation to be more advertiser friendly.

Another exhibit contains a similar conversation with a Coca-Cola executive seeking advice about whether to advertise on Spotify in light of comments podcaster Joe Rogan made on the platform. One email thread between GARM execs has them celebrating Meta adding new content moderation tools, and how to explain these to the executive committee.

"We need to get the ExecCo to understand that we're operating with a Roosevelt doctrine of 'speaking softly and carrying a big stick,'" it reads.

Video-hosting site Rumble, a big hit among conservative and alt-right folk, says it's also bringing similar antitrust legal action against advertisers after ads were pulled from its platform.

Ever since Musk took over Twitter and fired the majority of its staff, let previously banned users back on, and banged on about things like the "woke mind virus," big-name brands have been wary of using the platform to push their wares. This wasn't helped last year when Musk, on stage at a conference, told advertisers to "go fuck themselves," although he has since tried to build bridges.

The federation did not have comment at time of going to press. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/08/06/twitter_rumble_wfa_musk/