Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Thursday that he will launch an investigation into the World Federation of Advertisers to determine whether members of the trade group conspired to boycott “certain social media platforms.” The press release doesn’t specify the names of the social media platforms, but one of them is likely Elon Musk’s X. X filed an antitrust lawsuit against WFA in August, claiming advertisers had organized a “systematic and unlawful boycott” of the platform.
“Trade organizations and corporations cannot collude to block advertising revenue from the companies they seek to undermine,” Paxton said in a press release. “Today’s request for documents is part of an ongoing investigation to hold the WFA and its members accountable for any attempt to manipulate the system to harm organizations with which they may disagree.”
Some of WFA’s members, which include global brands like IBM, The Coca-Cola Company and CVS Health, have stopped or significantly reduced the amount they spend on X advertising since Elon Musk took over the company. Apple and Disney in November 2023, following reports that Elon Musk’s Advertisers, including , have been exodus from X in particular. At the time, a White House spokesman called one of Elon Musk’s personal posts “anti-Semitic and racist.”
Since then, X has sued many advertisers and advertising groups, claiming that these global brands are collectively conspiring to withhold billions of dollars in revenue from Now Texas’ AG is conducting his own investigation.
“It’s still a big problem,” Musk said of Paxton’s post about advertiser investigations on X on Thursday.
As with This is a US-based group founded in 2019 that includes some of the country’s largest advertisers. It created a framework and definitions for businesses to understand hate speech, brand safety and misinformation.
The AG’s investigation asked GARM for documents and information that could reveal whether it instructed brands to boycott certain social media platforms for violating brand safety standards.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino cited a July report from the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, which investigated GARM’s practices, in announcing her platform’s lawsuit against advertisers. The report found:
Through GARM, large corporations, advertising agencies, and industry associations have engaged in boycotts and other coordinated actions to demonetize platforms, podcasts, news outlets, and other content deemed unfavorable by GARM and its members. This collusion can have the effect of eliminating the diversity of content and perspectives available to consumers.
GARM closed in August shortly after X filed the lawsuit, noting it did not have the resources or finances to continue operations.
In the months leading up to this survey, some advertisers had actually resumed their ad spending on X, albeit at a much lower rate than before. Comcast, IBM, Disney and other major brands are reportedly returning to Musk’s platform this year. Moreover,
X and the World Federation of Advertisers did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
