The ad industry group named in X’s antitrust lawsuit is “dropping out,” two days after the social media company filed a lawsuit accusing major advertisers of an “unlawful boycott” of the company. The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) is “ceasing operations,” according to an email reported by Business Insider.
GARM was founded in 2019 to help set brand safety guidelines for major advertisers, and is part of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which was also named after . In accordance with Business InsiderWFA CEO Stephan Loerke told members that GARM is a non-profit organization with limited resources, but that the groups plan to fight the lawsuit.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino said the news is “an important acknowledgment and a necessary step in the right direction” in a statement. The company’s lawsuit, filed in Texas, alleges that WFA, GARM and several large advertisers “conspired … to withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue from Twitter.” UX has faced a sharp decline in its ad revenue over the past two years as advertisers have followed multiple reports of hate speech and illegal content on the site.
GRAM was previously named in a House Judiciary Committee report that accused the group of having an “anti-enforcement bias” and engaging in “anti-competitive” conduct. It called those allegations “baseless.” In a statement released earlier this week, the group revealed that it was formed after a mass shooting incident that was broadcast live on Facebook, with the aim of tackling the monetization of harmful content on the Internet. “Suggestions that GARM’s practices may interfere with freedom of expression are a deliberate misrepresentation of GARM’s work,” it wrote. “GARM is not a dog or a lobby. GARM does not participate in or encourage boycotts of any kind.”
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