Texas AG Ken Paxton investigates GARM ad cartel over boycott ‘conspiracy’
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into a shadowy left-leaning advertising cabal over whether it participated in a “coordinated plan or conspiracy” to boycott “certain social media platforms,” his office said Thursday.
Paxton is probing whether the powerful World Federation of Advertising and its now-defunct nonprofit wing, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), pressured “advertisers not to purchase online advertising space” from sites that violated its “brand safety standards.”
GARM and its members faced intense scrutiny after a damning House Judiciary Committee report released in July accused them of a coordinated effort to suppress online free speech and restrict ads to a slew of media outlets, including The Post and Elon Musk’s X.
The Republican demanded documents and information from WFA and GARM as part of the civil investigation. Any evidence of a collusive boycott could violate state antitrust laws, according to Paxton.
“Trade organizations and companies cannot collude to block advertising revenue from entities they wish to undermine,” Paxton said in a statement. “Today’s document request is part of an ongoing investigation to hold WFA and its members accountable for any attempt to rig the system to harm organizations they might disagree with.”
The WFA did not immediately return a request for further comment.
Shortly after Paxton announced the WFA probe, Musk posted on X: “This is still a major problem.”
The House report cited evidence that included internal emails from GARM’s radical executive Robert Rakowitz, who appeared to brag X was “80% below revenue forecasts” after GARM targeted the social media app over brand safety issues.
In response to the revelations, Musk hit WFA, GARM and a handful of key advertisers with a federal antitrust lawsuit for allegedly organizing an ad boycott.
The boycott cost X “billions of dollars in advertising revenue,” according to the suit.
WFA and GARM have strenuously denied wrongdoing. However, GARM shut down in August, citing mounting legal costs of its fight against Musk.
In October, X announced that it had reached a settlement with one of the defendants, Unilever, which had plans for its brands to resume advertising on the platform.
The antitrust claims against the other defendants are still pending.
