A prominent advertising industry organization is shutting down, just days after X, the platform owned by Elon Musk, filed a lawsuit accusing the group of illegally conspiring to boycott advertising on the site.
In a statement released on Friday, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) explained, “GARM is a small, non-profit initiative, and recent allegations that have unfortunately misrepresented its mission and actions have caused a distraction, depleting its resources and finances significantly. As a result, GARM has made the difficult decision to cease its activities.”
GARM, a voluntary ad-industry initiative run by the World Federation of Advertisers, was established to help brands prevent their advertisements from appearing alongside illegal or harmful content. Despite its closure, GARM stated that it still plans to defend itself in court.
The shutdown of GARM represents a temporary win for Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino, although a court ruling has yet to be made.
Yaccarino posted on X on Thursday, stating, “No small group should have the power to control what gets monetized. This acknowledgment is crucial and a necessary move in the right direction. I hope it signals that broader reforms across the industry are on the horizon.”
However, the lawsuit may further deter advertisers from X, according to Nandini Jammi and Claire Atkin, founders of the watchdog group Check My Ads Institute. In an op-ed published Thursday, they wrote, “It’s clear that advertising on X has become a risky business for advertisers.”
The lawsuit alleges that GARM organized a collective effort to withhold billions of dollars in advertising from Twitter due to concerns that the platform had strayed from brand safety standards following Musk’s acquisition in late 2022.
GARM, which was established in 2019 after the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque shootings—where the attacker livestreamed the event on Facebook—claimed in a statement that it had successfully reduced the placement of ads alongside illegal or harmful content from 6.1% in 2020 to 1.7% in 2023. The lawsuit names four of GARM’s over 100 members—CVS, Unilever, Mars, and the Danish energy company Ørsted—as defendants in the case filed in federal court in Texas on Tuesday.
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