Elon Musk’s X (NYSE: X) company has started legal action over what has been described as an illegal boycott of the platform. The social media giant’s claims are against a group of brands and advertisers.
X Starts Legal Action Over Alleged Illegal Boycott
The details were revealed on Tuesday, as the South Africa-born billionaire declared in a social media post that X was going to war after two years of trying for peace. He claims the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (Garm) has conspired against X with members like Mars and Unilever.
Don’t miss out the latest news, subscribe to LeapRate’s newsletter
Linda Yaccarino is the chief executive of X, and she claimed that GARM’s actions had cost X billions of dollars in revenue. GARM aims to identify and stop harmful online content, with Yaccarino saying that it organised illegal boycotts of the platform. She said:
The consequence – perhaps the intent – of this boycott was to seek to deprive X’s users, be they sports fans, gamers, journalists, activists, parents or political and corporate leaders, of the Global Town Square.
The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee recently published a report on this matter, with an antitrust lawsuit now being filed in Texas.
X has been at loggerheads with some advertisers since Musk bought it in 2022 in a $44bn deal. He previously accused advertisers of trying to blackmail him, while critics of X have claimed that Musk’s goal of making it a platform for free speech has led to a rise in unacceptable posts. Musk has previously sued the Media Matters group for suggesting that the amount of anti-Semitic content on X was growing.
