Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against GARM. In response, GARM was forced to shut down. It’s a loss for free speech.
Right wing extremists, a number of whom launched terrorist attacks in Canada, the United States, and, more recently, in the UK, have a heck of a lot to answer for. Unfortunately, society is such that if a far right extremist smashes windows and breaks into buildings, that action is treated differently from when just about anyone else does it. Instead of properly classifying these instances as terrorist attacks, people use much softer terms like “protest”, “demonstration”, or just people being passionate about feeling left behind. This despite the fact that the whole point of such instances is to sew fear into anyone who dares disagree. If Trump doesn’t win, then public officials get hanged. If a democratically elected government isn’t overthrown, then violence ensues until it does. This is not “protest”, this is terrorism plain and simple.
Of course, as the brainwashed maniacs would have you believe, they are only doing this to support “freedom”. One of their favourite go-to excuses for their terrorist-like activity is “free speech”. Yet, almost every time you go into what they specifically mean when they talk about free speech, what they really mean is that they only support speech that they support. Any speech that they disagree with should be silenced or otherwise oppressed. This, of course, goes as far away from free speech as you can possibly get.
There are loads of examples of this happening. For instance, in Canada, there is the debate going on about Bill S-210. This is known as Canada’s age verification bill. The intent of the bill is basically to censor otherwise legal speech. More specifically, it is intended to censor LGBTQ+ content over top of content that is deemed “explicit”. The legislation itself is pushed by the Conservatives who love to talk a big game about free speech. Yet, when I talk to Conservative party supporters to ask them if they support free speech, they love to tell me how Conservatives are the party that supports free speech. Yet, when I ask how they can support a party pushing internet censorship, while providing the context, the response is somewhere along the lines of “but that’s the kind of stuff that should be censored.” This without a hint of realization of what they just said. It would be outrageous if not knowing what they are calling for wasn’t so common.
Of course, the United States offers much larger examples of this. For instance, in Alabama, the so-called “free speech loving Republicans” are trying to push legislation that would jail librarians for offering books on LGBTQ+ content, among other things. Again, far right wing extremists only act like they support free speech when, in fact, they only care about speech they happen to support while suppressing any speech they happen to not like.
The hypocrisy of the far right on issues of free speech doesn’t end there. Right wing extremist idol, Elon Musk, has been hit with multiple controversies over his heavy handed censorship tactics. When Musk bought Twitter, he, among other things, reinstated pedophiles, criminals, neo-nazi’s, and other deplorables. At the same time, he banned numerous people who dared to criticize him, even after he said that he hopes his biggest critics stick around on his platform. What’s more, people working at then Twitter were frequently fired whenever someone dared to try and raise a counter point to any of his ideas. Ultimately, there is a reason why critics have the running gag of calling Musk a “free speech absolutist”.
Recently, Musk filed a lawsuit against advertisers for the crime of failing to advertise on his platform. He alleged collusion between the advertisers and claimed that multiple advertisers not advertising on his platform is signs of anti-trust violations. This despite the well documented (though subject to additional lawsuits, furthering the irony in all of this) issues of advertising appearing next to neo-nazi content as well as antisemitic posts. Generally speaking, there is a very strong case that advertisers, individually, noticed this being a thing and, individually, decided that they don’t like their brands being anywhere near things like hate speech and CSAM content. I know if I was advertising, I wouldn’t be wanting to sponsor such deplorable content myself.
GARM (Global Alliance for Responsible Media) is a big part of who is on the receiving end of this lawsuit. Musk’s case argues that GARM was responsible for organizing a “boycott” of X/Twitter. Yet, the evidence used seemingly was messages by GARM telling advertisers that it is up to them to decide whether or not to advertise on their platform. For Musk, that was apparently all the evidence he needed to prove collusion.
The lawsuit, for obvious reasons, is problematic on a number of fronts. First of all, there is no law saying that advertisers must advertise on a specific service or platform. If they want to advertise on a specific platform, they do so as a choice. If they decide that a specific platform is not brand safe and is not a good match for their products, then they can freely choose not to advertise on said platform. This is not rocket science.
What’s more, even if there was a case to be made that advertisers were collectively boycotting X/Twitter, there’s nothing illegal about that. If a company does something and that upsets a wide variety of people, then they are free to organize and proclaim that they won’t be doing business with them any more. It can be just anger towards the company or a pressure tactic to enact a social change. The potential success of these boycotts are a different matter, but last I checked, there is nothing illegal about boycotting a particular product.
At the end of the day, it’s hard to see this lawsuit having any merit. The problem, however, is that this is the United States we are talking about. This is the land where justice is largely only available to those who can afford it – meaning the ultra wealthy. Lawsuits can rack up a million dollars easily and that’s not something any average person can afford. As a result of this (and other factors as well), a frequent story we hear is that even though a lawsuit is absolutely insanely ridiculous, defendants either declare bankruptcy or settle – not because they did anything wrong, but because they can’t afford to move forward with the lawsuit (like countless numbers of American’s out there today).
That appears to be what happened with GARM. GARM is apparently a non-profit operated by two people. Not exactly a bastion of wealth. In response to the billionaire’s lawsuit, word is that GARM was forced to shut down. From Arstechnica:
An advertising industry initiative targeted by an Elon Musk lawsuit is “discontinuing” its activities and has deleted the member list from its website.
X’s antitrust lawsuit has drawn skeptical responses from law professors, who say it will be difficult to prove that companies violated antitrust laws by stopping advertisements. But while X may never obtain financial damages from the advertising group or corporations like CVS and Unilever that it also named as defendants, fighting the lawsuit could be costly.
Business Insider reported on the GARM shutdown today:
The advertising trade group The World Federation of Advertisers told its members on Thursday that it was “discontinuing” activities for its Global Alliance for Responsible Media initiative following an antitrust lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X against the company earlier this week.
Stephan Loerke, the CEO of the WFA, wrote in an email to members, seen by Business Insider, that the decision was “not made lightly” but that GARM is a not-for-profit organization with limited resources. Loerke said that the WFA and GARM intended to contest the allegations in X’s suit in court and were confident the outcome of the case would “demonstrate our full adherence to competition rules in all our activities.”
A WFA statement said that “GARM is a small, not-for-profit initiative, and recent allegations that unfortunately misconstrue its purpose and activities have caused a distraction and significantly drained its resources and finances. GARM therefore is making the difficult decision to discontinue its activities.” A GARM webpage that responds to recent criticism said the group was created “to help the industry address the challenge of illegal or harmful content on digital media platforms and its monetization via advertising.” Members can “use GARM’s resources and information about best practices to learn where their advertising investments go, and to avoid placement next to illegal or harmful content that could damage their brands’ reputation,” the page says.
GARM says it provides “voluntary frameworks” to help brands make advertising decisions and “does not interfere with a member’s decision as to whether or not to invest advertising resources on a particular website or channel.”
“Suggestions that GARM practices may impinge on free speech are a deliberate misrepresentation of GARM’s work. GARM is not a watchdog or lobby. GARM does not participate in or advocate for boycotts of any kind,” the group says.
One thing that is certain is that there is nothing untoward about offering advice, offering information, or even doing advocacy work. There’s nothing saying you can’t disagree with such activities, but to actively force the shut down of another organization because you disagree with it is not a “win” for free speech by any means. this despite what Republican’s would have you believe.
Mike Masnick of TechDirt also offered his own thoughts on the situation:
Up is down, left is right, day is night. And now, to Jim Jordan and Elon Musk, clear, direct government censorship is, apparently, “free speech.”
This isn’t a huge surprise, but on Thursday, the World Federation of Advertising shut down GARM, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, in response to legal threats from ExTwitter and Rumble, and a bullshit Congressional investigation led by Jim Jordan.
As we have detailed, GARM was setup following the mosque shootings in New Zealand, which was livestreamed. Brand advertisers were accused (arguably unfairly) of profiting off of such things, so they put together this alliance to share information about best practices on social media advertising for brand safety.
GARM was specifically a way for advertisers to set up those best practices, share them with each other, but also to share them with social media sites, to say “hey, this is the kind of trust & safety processes we expect if we’re going to advertise.”
I disagreed with GARM about lots of things, but in a free market, where there is free speech, they should absolutely be allowed to create best practices and to talk with platforms and advertisers and advocate for better trust & safety practices in order for brands to feel safe that their ads won’t show up next to dangerous content.
All of it was entirely voluntary. Advertisers didn’t have to abide by the standards, nor did platforms. This was literally just part of the marketplace of ideas. Some advertisers advocated for efforts to be made to protect their brand safety, and some platforms agreed while others, like Rumble, did not.
Anyway, the World Federation of Advertisers has apparently given in to this lawfare from Elon and Jim Jordan and announced on Thursday that they were shutting down GARM because of all of this.
In other words, Elon, Jordan, and others have used the power of the state, both in the form of lawsuits and congressional investigations, to browbeat advertisers into no longer speaking up about ways to keep social media sites safe for their brands.
This is the exact opposite of free speech. It’s literally using the power of the state to shut up companies which were expressing views that Elon and Jordan didn’t like.
And, so, of course, they and their fans are celebrating this state-backed censorship as a “win for free speech.” It’s ridiculously Orwellian.
This is not a “win” for the First Amendment in any way. It is, in every way, the opposite. The House Judiciary Committee, under Jim Jordan, abused the power of the state to shut up companies from talking about which sites they felt were safe for brands or what those sites could do to be better.
And, of course, a bunch of other very foolish people repeated more of this kind of nonsense, including some of MAGA’s favorite journalists, who pretend to support free speech. Ben Shapiro called it an “important win for free speech principles,” which is just disconnected from reality.
Linda Yaccarino claims it proves that “no small group should be able to monopolize what gets monetized.” This makes no sense at all. No small group monopolized anything. They just tried to put in place some basic best practices to protect their brands and no one had to agree with them at all (and many didn’t).
And if Linda or Elon thinks this will magically make advertisers want to come back to ExTwitter, they’re even more delusional than I thought. Who would ever want to advertise on a platform that sued advertisers for leaving?
It’s worth pointing out again that all of this happened after Musk told advertisers to f*** off earlier. Those advertisers basically took Musk up on his offer and stopped advertising. When it became apparent to Musk that he needed those advertising dollars, he filed a lawsuit to cover up his previous stupidity by basically saying that it is illegal to refuse to advertise on his platform.
All this leads back to the original problem in all of this. The far right only pretends to support free speech. In reality, they only support free speech so long as it is speech that they personally support. If it’s speech they do not support, they will not hesitate to use the power of government and the courts via high priced lawyers to stamp out that speech. Over the last several years, we’ve seen this over and over again. What’s more, it’s a safe bet that the far right won’t hesitate to do the same thing again – to use the power of government, money, and the courts, to bully those who disagree with them into silence. After all, they love having the ability to censor anyone and everyone they happen to not like.
