Elon Musk’s X has settled its multiyear legal battle with advertising trade group the World Federation for Advertisers (WFA), the two organizations said on Wednesday.
The settlement ends Musk’s aggressive attempt to hold advertisers legally responsible for pulling spending from X over brand safety concerns.
X sued the WFA in 2024 for conducting what it called a “systematic illegal boycott” of the platform after it saw a decline in advertising revenue following Musk’s $44 billion takeover of the social network in 2022. Companies X accused of doing so included Mars, CVS Health, Shell, Lego, and more. The advertisers rejected the allegations and argued that brands are free to decide where to spend their advertising dollars.
A federal court dismissed the lawsuit in March after a judge said X had failed to demonstrate that it had suffered any harm under federal competition laws. X had appealed the decision in April.
“Today the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and X Corp. are putting the litigation involving the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) behind them,” the joint statement reads. “This resets the relationship between the two organizations.”
X had alleged that advertisers reduced their spending because of guidelines developed by the WFA’s Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a coalition of brands and advertising agencies that was established to develop standards aimed at preventing ads from being displayed alongside harmful online content.
Advertisers were concerned that their brands would appear alongside harmful content on the social network after Musk overhauled the platform’s content moderation policies.
“WFA reiterates its commitment to freedom of speech, a principle first included in WFA’s founding constitution back in 1953, and a principle it shares with X,” the statement reads. “On August 9, 2024, WFA discontinued GARM. WFA will not form or restart GARM or a similar initiative. WFA and X are fully aligned in the view that brands, platforms, and consumers will all benefit from brand-safety innovation.”
The lawsuit wasn’t the only time Musk clashed with advertisers. After acquiring X, he told advertisers who paused spending on the platform to “go f*** yourself.”
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Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University.
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