An advertising industry group named in X’s antitrust lawsuit is “suspending” the social media company two days after a lawsuit accusing major advertisers of an “illegal boycott” against the company. Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) is “ceasing operations,” according to an email informed by Business Insider.
GARM was established in 2019 to help define brand safety guidelines for major advertisers and is part of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA). . according to Business InsiderWFA CEO Stephan Loerke told members GARM is a nonprofit organization with limited resources, but the groups plan to fight the lawsuit.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a statement that the news was “an important acknowledgment and a necessary step in the right direction.” . The company’s lawsuit, filed in Texas, alleges that WFA, GARM and several major advertisers “collectively siphoned off billions of dollars in advertising revenue from Twitter …… X has experienced steep declines in ad revenue as advertisers over the past two years following multiple reports of hate speech and anti-Semitic content on the platform.
GRAM was previously accused in a House Judiciary Committee report of the group’s “anti-conservative bias” and “anti-competitive” behavior. He called these claims “groundless”. in his statement about Earlier this week, the group stated that it was created in the wake of the mass shooting that was streamed live on Facebook to address the monetization of malicious content online. “Suggestions that GARM’s practices may affect free speech are a deliberate misrepresentation of GARM’s work,” he wrote. “GARM is not a watchdog or a lobby. GARM does not participate in or advocate any boycotts.”
