Elon Musk’s social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, has initiated a lawsuit against a coalition of advertisers, claiming they have breached antitrust regulations while boycotting the service.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, accuses the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) of conspiring to “collectively withhold billions in advertising revenue” from the platform. Brands named in the suit include CVS, Unilever, Mars, and Orsted, a Danish renewable energy firm.

GARM operates under the World Federation of Advertisers, aiming to assist brands in avoiding advertisements alongside content deemed illegal or harmful.

The boycott involved numerous companies in addition to those mentioned in the lawsuit, arising from concerns that the platform, which was then still called Twitter, was failing to uphold GARM’s content safety guidelines.

However, the lawsuit contends that these boycotts violate antitrust laws, labeling them as a “coercive exercise of market power by advertisers seeking to promote their own economic interests through commercial restrictions at the expense of social media platforms and their users.”

Response from X Executives

Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, released an open letter on Tuesday, claiming that the boycotts have led to the loss of billions in revenue for the company.

“Simply put, when the marketplace of ideas is undermined, people are hurt, as some viewpoints are not financially supported due to an unlawful boycott,” Yaccarino stated.

Musk was more direct in his own statement on Tuesday, declaring via X, “We attempted to maintain peace for two years; now it’s war.”

The lawsuit asserts that the boycotts began in November 2022, shortly after Musk took over the company, driven by worries that Musk’s commitments to relax content regulations would render the platform non-compliant with GARM’s criteria.

Although the lawsuit claims that X has since adopted brand safety standards comparable to GARM’s, the boycotts remain ongoing.

A History of Tensions

Since Musk’s acquisition of the company in 2022, the social media giant has faced ongoing tensions with advertisers regarding content moderation.

During a discussion at the New York Times DealBook summit last November, following the withdrawal of advertisements by several major brands like Apple, IBM, and Walt Disney after Musk referred to an antisemitic post on the platform as “the actual truth,” Musk criticized the advertising boycott, branding it as “blackmail” and impolitely telling those advertisers to “(expletive) yourself.”

In July 2023, X Corp. filed a lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a non-profit that had published reports concerning hate speech on the platform, claiming that their actions harmed the company’s business interests.

This lawsuit was dismissed by a judge in March.

Additionally, in November 2023, X Corp. sued the media watchdog group Media Matters, alleging that their report showing ads alongside posts that praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party was misleading and defamatory. This case is scheduled to go to trial in April 2025.