X drops Unilever from its ‘advertiser boycott’ lawsuit

12 Oct 2024 By theverge

X is dropping claims against Unilever in its lawsuit that accuses advertisers and brands of participating in an "illegal boycott" of the company. The claims against Unilever, which owns household names like Dove and Hellmann's, were dismissed today.

Last fall, X also sued the nonprofit Media Matters for America in an effort to silence the group after it reported that ads for major brands like Apple and IBM were appearing alongside Nazi content. IBM paused advertising on X following the report.

This is just one of the lawsuits Musk has filed against critics and former business partners, as he's also suing OpenAI and founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman for the second time. (Musk previously filed and then dropped a similar suit earlier this year.)

On X, the platform's office account stated it had "reached an agreement" with Unilever and will "continue [its] partnership" with the company. X didn't immediately respond to questions about the agreement or terms or what it meant by the "ecosystem-wide solution" it referenced in its X post. Unilever declined to comment on the record. The suit still names CVS, Mars, and Ørsted.

The advertiser antitrust suit filed this summer targeted the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which had led an industry initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). Under the GARM agreement, brands refused to advertise on platforms that fell short of certain safety standards. In its suit, X claimed that WFA and other named brands like Unilever conspired to "collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue" from the platform. Perplexingly, X also said it had joined GARM about a month before it sued WFA.

Shortly after the X lawsuit, GARM announced it was discontinuing its operations, saying, "GARM is a small, not-for-profit initiative, and recent allegations that unfortunately misconstrue its purpose and activities have caused a distraction and significantly drained its resources and finances."