The World Federation of Advertisers set up Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) department to create guidelines on hate speech and brand safety, including prohibitions on so-called misinformation. A cabal of advertisers allegedly used the standards to boycott Elon Musk's X, concerned about what they described as a conservative bias on the social media platform.
Michael Morris of MRC Free Speech America says Musk tried to work with the group but filed a lawsuit seeking redress for X after two years of niceness got him "nothing but empty words" and "billions of dollars in advertising revenue" being withheld from the platform.
"He said, 'I strongly encourage any company who's been systematically boycotted by advertisers to file a lawsuit,'" Morris relays. "There may also be criminal liability via RICO Act, and he says, 'Everybody who has been boycotted should file a lawsuit in every country they've been boycotted.'"
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act is a federal law that was passed in 1970 to prevent organized crime and racketeering from infiltrating legitimate businesses that operate in interstate commerce. It also aims to help victims of organized crime recover.
The World Federation of Advertisers announced late last week that it was discontinuing GARM. Though no reference to the lawsuit or a settlement was mentioned, Morris says it's a good check against censorship.
"They're really attacking the ability of Americans and others across the world to speak freely on a platform," he observes. "What they're afraid of is free speech."
Protecting free speech, however, appears to be Musk's motivation.
When he was trying to buy Twitter in 2022, he said he was doing so because it was not living up to its potential as a "platform for free speech."
"Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization," he said. "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Musk posted in April 2022.
