Rumble Joins X In Massive Lawsuit Against 'Advertising Cartel'

Social media platform X has filed a lawsuit against an 'advertising cartel' who have colluded to control online speech, as revealed on last month by an interim staff report released by the House Judiciary Committee.

In a Tuesday filing against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and several members - including CVS Health, Mars, Orsted and Unilever, X alleges that the group abused its influence over marketers and ad agencies to unfairly discriminate against X, prompting an ad boycott.

"These actions were all against the unilateral self-interest of the advertisers; they made economic sense only in furtherance of a conspiracy performed in the confidence that competing advertisers were doing the same," reads the complaint.

In an open letter, X CEO Linda Yaccarino alleged that GARM's "behavior is a stain on a great industry, and cannot be allowed to continue," adding "It's also clear that there are likely others who suffered at the hands of this activity. This case is about more than damages - we have to fix a broken ecosystem that allows this illegal activity to occur."

Shortly after lawsuit was filed, video-sharing platform Rumble joined the lawsuit.

The conspiracy centers around an initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), created by the WFA, that established arbitrary standards for the content on digital platforms where its members may want to advertise. GARM used those one-size-fits-all standards to perpetrate an advertiser boycott against Rumble and other platforms. The suit also notes that GARM has vast reach since it counts the six largest ad agency holding companies among its members, including defendant WPP.

The House report details a coordinated effort by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative to demonetize and suppress disfavored content across the internet.

As we noted last month, the WFA is a global association representing over 150 of the world’s biggest brands and over 60 national advertiser associations which created GARM in 2019.

This alliance quickly amassed significant market power, representing roughly 90% of global advertising spend, which amounts to nearly one trillion dollars annually.

GARM’s Steer Team reads like a who’s who of corporate America, including heavyweights such as Unilever, Mars, Diageo, Procter & Gamble (P&G), GroupM, AB InBev, L'Oréal, Nestlé, IBM, Mastercard, and PepsiCo. These corporations not only wield immense economic influence but are now revealed to be leveraging this power to control online discourse under the guise of "brand safety."

As Axios notes;

• Last month, conservatives on Capitol Hill held a hearing to address complaints from conservative media firms, mainly the Daily Wire, that GARM was colluding with ad-buying giant GroupM to discourage clients from buying ads on their sites because of conservative politics.
• The lawsuit references a report published earlier this month by the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee that argues that GARM used "shadowy corporate coordination" to silence conservatives.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Turley also notes that House Judiciary Committee under Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is moving forward in demanding documents and records from leading companies utilizing the GARM system, a company that I have previously criticized. It is a welcomed effort for anyone who is concerned over the use of these blacklisting systems to curtail free speech. However, time is of the essence.

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Notably, Rob Rakowitz, head of GARM, pushed GDI and embraced its work. In an email to GARM members obtained by the committee last month, Rakowitz wrote that he wanted to “ensure you’re working with an inclusion and exclusion list that is informed by trusted partners such as NewsGuard and GDI — both partners to GARM and many of our members.”

GARM is being used by WFA to achieve what GDI failed to accomplish. The WFA sites refers to Rakowitz as “a career change agent” who will “remove harmful content from ad-supported digital media.”

Rakowitz’s views on free speech are chilling and his work shows how these systems can be used to conceal bias in targeting the revenue of sites with opposing views.

Rakowitz has denounced the “extreme global interpretation of the US Constitution” and how civil libertarians cite “‘principles for governance’ and applying them as literal law from 230 years ago (made by white men exclusively).”

He appears to be referring to free speech. If so, it is deeply troubling. Some of us believe that free speech is a human right, not just an American right. Those “white men” include philosophers from the enlightenment whose ideas were incorporated in the Framer’s view of inalienable rights like free speech.

The threat against free speech today is being led by private groups seeking to exercise an unprecedented level of control what people can read and discuss.