Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, on Tuesday sued a global advertising alliance and several major companies, including Unilever, Mars and CVS Health, accusing them of unlawfully conspiring to shun the social network and intentionally causing it to lose revenue. The company formerly known as Twitter accused the defendants of a “massive advertiser boycott”.
X filed the lawsuit in federal court in Texas on Tuesday against the World Federation of Advertisers as well as the companies individually.
“We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war,” Musk tweeted on Tuesday.
The lawsuit said advertisers, acting through a World Federation of Advertisers initiative called Global Alliance for Responsible Media, collectively and maliciously withheld “billions of dollars in advertising revenue” from X. The company said they acted against their own economic self-interests in a conspiracy against the platform that violated US antitrust law.
In a statement on Tuesday about the lawsuit, X’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, said: “People are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is constricted. No small group of people should monopolize what gets monetized.”
“The consequence – perhaps the intent – of this boycott was to seek to deprive X’s users, be they sports fans, gamers, journalists, activists, parents or political and corporate leaders, of the Global Town Square,” she wrote.
The World Advertising Federation, Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ad revenue at X slumped for months after Musk bought the company in 2022. Brands had been wary of rapid changes initiated under Musk’s ownership. Watchdog groups have catalogued a sharp rise in antisemitic content on X, including ads running beside posts expressing pro-Nazi sentiments, after Musk gutted the social network’s content moderation teams. A suit filed by X against one such organization, Media Matters, is scheduled for trial in April 2025.
The advertising group launched the responsible media initiative in 2019 to “help the industry address the challenge of illegal or harmful content on digital media platforms and its monetization via advertising”.
X said in its lawsuit that it had applied brand-safety standards that are comparable to those of its competitors and that “meet or exceed” measures specified by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media. The company is seeking unspecified damages and a court order against any continued efforts to conspire to withhold ad dollars.
The lawsuit said X had become a “less effective competitor” in the sale of digital advertising.