On Tuesday, Elon Musk’s X filed an antitrust lawsuit in Texas federal court against a far-left advertising cartel and several member companies, seeking trebled compensatory damages and injunctive relief.
The suit claims that X was unlawfully targeted by an ad boycott.
The lawsuit names the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), its parent company, the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), and GARM members CVS Health, Mars, Orsted, and Unilever, which reportedly controls 90% of global marketing efforts.
Shortly after Musk’s announcement, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski announced that he was joining Musk in the lawsuit against the GARM cartel.
BREAKING: Rumble has joined @X to sue a cartel of advertisers and ad agencies who conspired to block ad revenue from going to certain platforms and content creators.
— Rumble 🏴☠️ (@rumblevideo) August 6, 2024
GARM was a conspiracy to perpetrate an advertiser boycott of Rumble and others, and that’s illegal. pic.twitter.com/7mnYkyoKuR
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski appeared on Fox Business on Wednesday to discuss the significant antitrust lawsuit filed by Rumble and X against Global Alliance for Responsible Media, its parent firm, World Federation of Advertisers (WFA). The lawsuit accuses these advertisers of coordinating a boycott against spending money on the platforms. Later, Pavlovski shared emails on X from advertising agencies that pressured Rumble to cut ties with conservative creators and abandon what they describe as “right-wing culture” in order to secure advertising deals.
“If you’re an advertiser and you don’t wanna advertise on Rumble or X, that’s totally fine. You have the option to do that. But the problem happens when you have a consortium, or a group like the world federation of advertisers, or the group that they created called GARM, which then assembles all these advertisers and agencies, which creates a huge amount of power for GARM to basically instruct these companies on whether or not and how they want to employ brand safety standards,” Pavlovski told Fox Business.
“They then can now discriminate against certain voices on other platforms,” he continued. “If they don’t like what some speech might happen on Rumble or X, they can say, we’re not going to touch that, which then causes advertising rates to go higher because now they’re only accessing a certain portion of the market and then drives higher prices for their shareholders and their brands. This harms the advertisers, the shareholders, it creates higher fees for the agencies and also harms Rumble creators and Rumble viewers and the Rumble platform.”
Watch:
The CEO of Rumble, Chris Pavlovski, is suing Google over allegations that the tech giant has engaged in anticompetitive practices, including favoring its own YouTube platform in search results and its Android operating system. Rumble claims that Google’s actions have harmed… pic.twitter.com/3IcjVSOAZ0
— Conservative News Feed (@C_N_F__on__X) August 8, 2024
On Wednesday afternoon, Pavlovski revealed the first in a series of conversations with advertisers regarding potential deals with Rumble.
The first email came from Diageo North America, a leading alcoholic beverage company and a member of the “GARM Steer Team,” according to Pavlovski. In the email, the Diageo representative stated, “There is no scenario where we approve a platform that has Steven Crowder, Alex Jones, or the like. The content on your platfor is non-compliant pretty much across every category we try to avoid.”
The representative signed off with his preferred pronouns, of course: “He/Him.”
Similar concerns were echoed by Inspire Brands, which represents high-profile clients such as Dunkin’ Donuts, Baskin Robbins, and Jimmy John’s. A representative for Inspire Brands wrote in an email to Rumble, “To be honest [redacted], I would be opposed to appearing on the current version of the platform — the right-wing culture of the site is too polarizing from a brand standpoint today.”
Meanwhile I’m willing to bet they advertise on YouTube, Facebook and others (where @scrowder is also available).
— Chris Pavlovski (@chrispavlovski) August 7, 2024
2nd drop — We pitched @dunkindonuts and @InspireBrands beacause Rumble over indexes with coffee consumption. Their discrimination against “right wing culture” inspired us to build @rumble1775 coffee, a coffee for all cultures (which is doing great btw). pic.twitter.com/ANzJXHUcwx
— Chris Pavlovski (@chrispavlovski) August 7, 2024
Rightfully, there are already many calls for a boycott against Dunkin Donuts.
Dunkin’ Donuts is complete garbage, honestly. It’s surprising they’re still in business. Their success probably has more to do with their coffee than their donuts, however, that isn’t anything special either, and is hugely overpriced.
#BoycottDunkinDonuts
— Thomas Paine Band (@ThomasPaineBand) August 8, 2024
Dunkin Donuts is boycotting Rumble and X because the company hates conservatives and free speech!
Both @Diageo_NA and @dunkindonuts want Rumble to drop @scrowder and get away from “right wing culture”. CEO of Rumble told them,” No, we don’t discriminate.… pic.twitter.com/XwIQkpgwgV
Shortly after the calls to boycott Dunkin Donuts, #BoycottDunkinDonuts became the top trending topic on X.
Why did our #1 trend in the USA by a mile suddenly get removed by X. We need an explanation. Are billion dollar companies more importantly than us? It’s obvious they panicked and called X behind the scenes and had it removed – so disappointed in X – this isn’t free speech.… pic.twitter.com/uBaKkEDC1F
— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) August 8, 2024
BREAKING: Millions of people across the country will be boycotting Dunkin Donuts after Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski released information showing them as a big actor in the move to boycott platforms like Rumble and 𝕏
— George (@BehizyTweets) August 8, 2024
Oh, how the turned have tables
We’re WINNING pic.twitter.com/RezejsHK60
Pavlovski shared his response to Dunkin Donuts and Diageo North American, which both want Rumble to drop Steven Crowder over the so-called “right-wing culture”:
Both Diageo NA and Dunkin Donuts want us to drop Steven Crowder and get away from “right wing culture” in order to get ad dollars from them.
My response: No, we don’t discriminate. All cultures are welcome on Rumble.
Both @Diageo_NA and @dunkindonuts want us to drop @scrowder and get away from “right wing culture” in order to get ad dollars from them.
— Chris Pavlovski (@chrispavlovski) August 7, 2024
My response: No, we don’t discriminate. All cultures are welcome on Rumble.
