• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, 8 hours ago

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan late Friday released a sensationally titled staff report, "Exporting Censorship: How GARM's Advertising Cartel Helped Corporations Collude With Foreign Governments To Silence American Speech," conflating the World Federation of Advertisers' self-regulatory effort with disparate regulatory efforts by various governments around the world.

The report alleges that GARM (Global Alliance for Responsible Media) pressured Twitter/X with potential advertising boycotts, but failed to point out that Twitter actually was a founding member of GARM and that Elon Musk's X even rejoined the alliance, before ultimately breaking with it and suing the WFA and some of its key members, leading to the demise of GARM.

Chairman Jordan's staff report gets a number of facts about GARM, the WFA -- as well as the ad industry in general -- wrong, but its main takeaway is that the global ad trade association "colluded" with its members to censor free speech on social media platforms in America, but the main focus of GARM was to inform advertisers about the kinds of content their ads would appear next to on various social media properties.

The report, which describes GARM as a "cartel," follows an initial report released last year alleging that GARM engaged in "collusive conduct."

The just-released final report alleges that GARM also "coordinated its efforts with foreign governments to achieve these goals."

The report separately implicates Dentsu, which in September 2024 unveiled but subsequently abandoned plans to form a new post-GARM coalition to encourage responsibility by digital media companies after being contacted by the House committee.

The report does not recommend any explicit actions, but concludes by noting, "While GARM has disbanded and other similar initiatives have failed to launch, the threat of collusive conduct in opposition to free expression remains. For several years, the Committee on the Judiciary has conducted extensive fact-finding around the threat to free speech from government, Big Tech, foreign regulators, and others. This oversight has informed legislation to reinvigorate First Amendment rights and dismantle the censorship regime. The work is not done, and the Committee will continue to remain vigilant in defense of the Constitution and the fundamental principles it protects."