WFA Shutters GARM, X Antitrust Suit Cited

by Joe Mandese , August 8, 2024

The World Federation of Advertisers' Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) has discontinued operations following an antitrust lawsuit filed by X Corp. alleging GARM conspired to influence advertisers to withhold billions of advertising dollars from the social media platform.

"No small group should be able to monopolize what gets monetized," X CEO Linda Yaccarino tweeted following a report published by Business Insider that cited an email sent by WFA CEO Stephan Loerke to the federation's members.

"This is an important acknowledgement and a necessary step in the right direction. I am hopeful that it means ecosystem-wide reform is coming," she continued, attaching a tweet from the @JudicaryGOP ironically calling the decision a "Big win for the First Amendment." (See below).

The WFA had no public statement, posted the following statement on its website early Friday morning.

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8 comments about "WFA Shutters GARM, X Antitrust Suit Cited".

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Roxanne Darling from Bare Feet Studios LLC, August 8, 2024 at 2:53 p.m.
This is deeply regrettable. Fascism expert and Yale scholar, Timothy Snyder, has written a set of rules to prevent authoritarian takeovers.

RULE #1: Do not obey in advance.

They could have fund-raised. They have Musk on video telling advertisers to f*** off. They could have won this. Advertisers only stand to damage their already poor reputation. This was one time they were acting for the public good — now throwing that away.
Reply

Artie White from Zoom Media Corp, August 8, 2024 at 2:55 p.m.

How is this a "big win for the First Amendment?" (Rhetorical- clearly this is just a talking point for non-industry MAGA fanatics.)

More to the point: how will this bring advertisers back to Twitter / X? (Also rhetorical - it will not.)

Rick Spence from Canent Communications replied, August 8, 2024 at 3:27 p.m.

Excellent points. Thanks.

Chet Dalzell from Digital Advertising Alliance, August 8, 2024 at 4:05 p.m.

How dare anyone moderate for hate speech, falsehoods, criminal activity such as fraud and insurrections and other brand safety concerns? Fight for what's right! The First Amendment is also about Commercial Free Speech -- and that means brands putting their ads in places they deem safe.

Tony Jarvis from Olympic Media Consultancy, August 8, 2024 at 5:31 p.m.

The head of the House Judiciary Committee is the despicable, all in MAGA, Jim Jordan who condoned the January 6th Insurrection. I do not believe the First Amendment sanctions sedition, blatant racism, hate speech, etc., frequently published on X, despite Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act which protects the social media "data pirates" and which, in my opinion, should have been rescinded many years ago.
Sadly, the WFA has surely not only failed its members but more importantly has failed every brand marketed by its members.

david raab from raab associates, August 9, 2024 at 10:29 a.m.

Musk is running a protection racket: buy an inexpensive ad or face an expensive lawsuit. Like any protection racket, it works because the cost of punishing a few resisters is less than the income generaetd from the many non-resisters. It doesn't work if the victims cooperate to share the cost of resisting. In this case, that means advertisers banding together to fund the defense of GARM and anyone else who is attacked on these grounds. Giving in to intimidation only encourages further attacks. Appeasement doesn't work.

Thomas Siebert from BENEVOLENT PROPAGANDA, August 9, 2024 at 11:13 a.m.

I'm enjoying all the impotent seething and communist coping about an event I told you all was going to happen, roughly six weeks ago.

But I only comment to point out that Yale's untrustworthy Timothy Snyder is a crazy war-mongering Russiaphobe who bought every lie that came down the pike and continues to push disproven and debunked propaganda about what's going on in Ukraine because he's got a thirst for blood. Or something to hide. Or something.

It's quite hilarious that Timmy Snyder, who pushed mandatory mRNA vaxx and masking [https://snyder.substack.com/p/vaccinate-the-world], would be obliviously and hypocritically cited for his so-called anti-fascism "RULE #1: Do not obey in advance." LOL!!! A lot of us smartly disobeyed and thought for ourselves, but Snyder didn't like that kind of non-conformity. That makes Snyder a useful idiot at best, and anyone who cites him is whatever's a step down from "useful idiot"...at best.

There's also a hugely amusing "Law of Inversion" claim that Musk is "running a protection racket," when that's obviously what GARM was doing, and they knew it, which is why they folded. Inverting the Inversions, wild times.

Truly the comment section here is a precise example of Christopher Bray's savvy and insightful recent observation that "We’re living through a very long and indescribably tedious experiment to see if relentless media messaging can defeat direct life experience." With GARM folding in such a massively humiliating yet predictable way, chalk one up for "life experience." But we've got a long way to go.

Roxanne Darling from Bare Feet Studios LLC, August 10, 2024 at 10:13 p.m.

Musk is the greatest threat to democracy.

"With nearly 195mn followers, he is America’s most influential purveyor of disinformation. In total he has made 50 posts since January 1 that have been debunked by independent fact checkers, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate. These were viewed 1.2bn times. They included a deep fake video that purportedly showed Kamala Harris calling herself “the ultimate diversity hire."

https://www.ft.com/content/bdd100a8-4817-44f6-9838-bda760aaebf1