• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, Yesterday

Advertisers are asking a judge to dismiss Elon Musk's ad-boycott suit, arguing that the allegations in the complaint, even if proven true, wouldn't show that there was a conspiracy to deprive X, formerly Twitter, of ad revenue.

“Antitrust law does not require advertisers to keep doing business with a platform that degrades the quality of its service,” the companies, along with the trade group World Federation of Advertisers, say in papers filed late Wednesday with U.S. District Court Judge Jane Boyle in the Northern District of Texas.

They add that antitrust principles also don't “presume an illegal conspiracy when advertisers make rational, independent business decisions.”

Their argument comes in response to a lawsuit brought by Musk's X Corp. last August, when he alleged that the Belgian-based World Federation of Advertisers and its now defunct brand safety initiative, Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), sparked a “massive advertiser boycott” that cost the company billions in ad revenue.

Musk also sued advertisers, alleging that they schemed with GARM to deprive X of ad dollars. The current version of the complaint, which has been amended twice, names 10 advertisers -- energy companies Ørsted (based in Denmark) and Shell, food giants Mars, Nestle and Tyson, healthcare company CVS, pharmaceutical firm Abbott, toothpaste and personal care brand Colgate-Palmolive, toy maker Lego and social platform Pinterest.

The complaint alleges that between November 2022 and December 2022, at least 18 GARM-members stopped advertising on Twitter, and that “dozens” of other members “substantially reduced” their advertising.

Musk sued three weeks after the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee issued a report accusing GARM of coordinating action by corporations, ad agencies and other industry groups in order to “demonetize platforms, podcasts, news outlets, and other content deemed disfavored by GARM and its members.”

That report specifically accused GARM of colluding to cut ad revenue to X after its October 2022 acquisition by Elon Musk.

The World Federation of Advertisers shuttered GARM in August, days after Musk sued. 

The trade organization has repeatedly said GARM's brand safety standards were voluntary, and that members were free to accept or reject those standards.

The advertisers and World Federation of Advertisers argue in their new court papers that Musk's suit shouldn't proceed for several reasons. Among others, they argue that the complaint lacks allegations that would show the companies colluded with each other, as opposed to making individual decisions about where to advertise.

The complaint “is bereft of facts concerning specific persons who agreed to take some action, or a date, time, or place at which they did so,” they argue.

They contend that by 2022, advertisers were concerned about brand safety on Twitter -- and that those concerns grew after Musk purchased the platform and “made drastic changes,” including “firing many of the people who helped make the platform welcoming to users and accommodating to family-friendly brands.”

“Individual advertisers and ad agencies responded in different ways to Twitter’s brand safety woes,” they write. “Some continued advertising on Twitter without change. Some slowed or paused their ad spending, awaiting information about Twitter’s commitment to brand safety. A small proportion chose to leave the platform and run their ads elsewhere.”

They added that the complaint itself alleges that relatively few GARM members -- 18 out of an estimated 118, by X's estimate -- stopped advertising on X, and that non-GARM members also ceased advertising on the platform.

“X’s allegation that less than 20% of GARM’s members stopped advertising on Twitter dispels any suggestion that GARM membership was tantamount to an agreement to boycott Twitter,” they argue.

Other organizations, including Media Matters for America and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, separately raised concerns about content on X. Media Matters for America, for instance, reported in 2023 that ads for brands including Apple, Bravo, IBM and Oracle were being placed next to pro-Nazi posts on the platform. (X, which is suing over that report, responded that the ad placements highlighted in Media Matters' report were “inorganic” and rare.)

The Center for Countering Digital Hate also reported that X allowed racist, homophobic and antisemitic comments posted by Twitter Blue subscribers to remain online. X sued the group over that report, but a federal judge dismissed X's case last year.

The World Federation of Advertisers and some of the other defendants on Wednesday separately urged Boyle to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that Texas lacks jurisdiction over them.