X, the social media platform Elon Musk owns, has filed a lawsuit against a group of advertisers who he claims staged a “massive advertiser boycott” of his platform that ultimately cost the company billions of dollars in revenue.
In the lawsuit, which was filed in Texas federal court on Tuesday, X alleges that the actions taken by members of the World Federation of Advertisers — including Mars, Orsted, CVS Health and Unilever — violated U.S. antitrust laws.
Musk accuses the Global Alliance for Responsible Media — which is the brand safety initiative that the advertising group runs — of coordinating a prolonged pause on advertising on the X platform not long after Musk bought the social media company in late 2022 for $44 billion.
X faced a lot of backlash after Musk bought the platform, as the entrepreneur initiated some controversial policies to encourage free speech — including reinstating many people who had their accounts permanently banned in the past, such as GOP nominee Donald Trump — and instituting a major overhaul of staff.
On Tuesday, Musk posted on X that “now it is war,” after the last two years of him being nice and “getting nothing but empty words.”
In a video announcing the lawsuit, CEO Linda Yaccarino said that the company moved forward with the suit after the House Judiciary Committee uncovered evidence as part of hearings, which revealed that a “group of companies organized a systematic illegal boycott” against their platform.
She continued:
“People are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is constricted. No small group of people should monopolize what gets monetized.”
Last month, the House committee hosted a hearing that analyzed whether current laws are “sufficient to deter anti-competitive collusion in online advertising.”
At the center of the lawsuit is a dispute that happened soon after Musk bought the platform formerly known as Twitter — not another dispute with some advertisers that happened one year after the purchase.
A litany of companies started to remove their advertising from X in November of 2023, after they were concerned that their ads were appearing next to hate speech and pro-Nazi content.
Musk didn’t help matters when those concerns were brought up, as he endorsed a popular conspiracy theory that’s antisemitic in nature.
The X owner then said that the advertisers that were fleeing his platform were essentially engaging in “blackmail,” telling them that they should just go away.
The World Federation of Advertisers is based in Belgium. Representatives for some of the major companies in the group didn’t respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press earlier this week.
One of the top executives for Unilever testified at the House hearing last month, defending its practice of how it chooses to place advertisements only on platforms that won’t bring harm to the brand.
As Unilever USA President Herrish Patel said:
“Unilever, and Unilever alone, controls our advertising spending. No platform has a right to our advertising dollar.”
