Posted on 08/06/2024 9:28:13 AM PDT by Miami Rebel
X on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a coalition of major advertisers, claiming that it had violated antitrust laws by coordinating with brands to dissuade them from spending money on the social media platform.
The suit, filed in federal court in Texas, claims that the coalition, known as GARM, “conspired” with leading brands, including CVS, Unilever and the Danish energy company Ørsted to “collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue” that were owed to X, then known as Twitter, in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media company in 2022.
“The illegal behavior of these organizations and their executives cost X billions of dollars,” wrote Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive, in an open letter to advertisers. “People are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is undermined and some viewpoints are not funded over others as part of an illegal boycott.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It's market manipulation and it's covered under racketeering laws.
The Global Alliance for Responsible Media Propaganda and the World Federation of Advertisers need to be dissolved and the korporate executives need to serve hard time.
“Similar, I suppose, to companies colluding for price-fixing.”
Price-fixing would pertain if the defendants (the advertisers) were in the same industry as the plaintiff (X.) Obviously they are not.
“Price-fixing would pertain if the defendants (the advertisers) were in the same industry as the plaintiff (X.) Obviously they are not.”
No, dummy, price-fixing is a crime against the buyer, which is X, so they do have standing.
You really do not understand law at all, do you?
Hypothetical:’
My little down has a weekly paper with 5000 subscribers.
The big advertisers are a car dealer, a bakery, and a hardware store.
They jointly determine that the paper has taken a pro-trans stand that they refuse to support.
Under your understanding of anti-racketeering law, could the three advertisers be compelled to continue placing ads?
“No, dummy, price-fixing is a crime against the buyer, which is X, so they do have standing.”
I might be a dummy, but even I can understand that in the case at hand X is the SELLER of advertising, not a buyer. You seem confused.
“Under your understanding of anti-racketeering law, could the three advertisers be compelled to continue placing ads?”
You seriously missed the point on the X lawsuit, and I mean by a mile. In your example, three people decided for themselves not to advertise. It would be a crime for those three to then tell other companies they will not do business with them if they advertise on X.
Imagine if all the employers and businesses of the world had a blacklist and your name was on it so that you could not work or shop anywhere.
Would you bitch or accept that it is their business to exclude you from all commerce?
The car dealer, bakery, and a hardware store owners each advertise their own business and don't have an advertising group where they tell members "either join the boycott or face the consequences".
“SELLER of advertising, not a buyer. “
You still do not get the advertising industry model at all.
X sells advertising but gets it from advertising management companies who refuse to transact with them.
You should take a class in economics and civics.
“It would be a crime for those three to then tell other companies they will not do business with them if they advertise on X.”
You are pleading a case that X itself is not making. (For one thing, X is not charging a crime, which it as a corporation cannot. It is filing a civil case.)
But more pertinent to your post, NOWHERE does X claim that the defendants threatened to not do business with companies that chose to continue advertising.
Rockefeller used his dominant market position to drive out competition in the petroleum business; Morgan used his with railroads.
The advertisers are not competitors of X. They are therefore not analogous to monopolists.
To lazy to actually learn something yourself?
Look here, this page describes the Sherman Act, Clayton Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act from which I derive my much oversimplified but accurate summation of organizations acting as a trust to prevent competition or employ anti competition monopolistic practices.
So instead of posting uninformed baseless challenges actually go learn something.
In short it is not legal to create a body dedicated to denying fair competition to a business group or community. It literally does not matter if there are other alternatives, it is still illegal to try to create anti competition, go look up the anti trust laws and stop looking so silly with your uninformed assumptions.
I get economics just fine, thanks, but you seem stuck on the idea that advertisers have an underlying obligation to spend money on placing ads with advertising mediums with which they disagree.
If X featured bestiality would Proctor & Gamble be forced to sell soap on it?
Bravo! I congratulate you for giving yourself a mini-tutorial on anti-trust law.
Unfortunately, in your research you seem to have gotten a confused understanding as to who is liable under the various Acts.
The laws pertain to COMPETITORS, not customers. If you live in a town with just two bakeries, you are under no obligation to balance your purchases at White Bread Inc. with purchases at La Baguette & Co., even if in not so doing your actions contribute to the failure of La Baguette. If, on the other hand, Amalgamated Big Bread, a huge producer, comes into town and undercuts both White Bread and La Baguette so as to drive them out of business, then yes, Amalgamated is liable for anti-competitive action.
This business about “either join the boycott or face the consequences” is entirely your invention. X, in its filing, nowhere alleges coercion by GARM or WFA.
Where is this imaginary blacklist from?
If Mercedes and Borden choose not to advertise on X but Clorox continues to do so, how would the former punish the latter?
This is an absurd embellishment of X’s case.
You haven’t read their case to know what it is, and you certainly have not even read the public statements by X.
This issue goes WAY over your head.
I read all 44 pages. Did you?
My biggest stock market profit of the past 5 years was betting against Musk and his lawyers when he was trying to walk away from his acquisition of Twitter. (Remember when he started complaining about bots, even though the tender offer was unconditional?) Those filings were A LOT longer than these.
That's the terminology right from the article.
"It's a nice place you've got here. It would be a shame if something happened to it."
Try again, I hope you are not a lawyer because you utterly fail. Please provide a specific reference to where it is limited to competitors. The laws are based around preventing competition, there is no loop hole that requires you to first be a competitor.
Interestingly trusts can literally involve others who may not be direct competitors but the collective can materially gain by limiting others ability to compete with those aligned with you, that was actually some of the impetus behind anti trust laws. The intentional deceptions used by groups to limit a company’s ability to compete. For example just denying a basic raw material that would prevent a company ability to compete. A competitor could ask a supplier to not sell to another competitor, maybe by offering a a higher payment for that raw material, a price they can pay due to their specific market share thus preventing a company from even starting up, both the company and supplier then would run afoul of anti trust laws. Very similar to the idea of influencing advertisers now in the twitter case.
A little insight, I did not just recently educate myself on this. You might want to come better prepared before tossing around thinly veiled ad hominems, especially when you are so misinformed.
I provided references to specific acts directly tied to the laws, you respond with assertions, basically your whole reply is an informal logical fallacy.
This is reductio ad absurdum.
“Very similar to the idea of influencing advertisers now in the twitter case.” No, it absolutely is not, unless you say that the advertisers’ money is a “raw material.” The advertising organizations aren’t bauxite producers choking off supplies to an aluminum producer.
“Interestingly trusts can literally involve others who may not be direct competitors but the collective can materially gain by limiting others ability to compete with those aligned with you, that was actually some of the impetus behind anti trust laws.” The advertisers are neither direct nor indirect competitors.
“For example just denying a basic raw material that would prevent a company ability to compete. A competitor could ask a supplier to not sell to another competitor, maybe by offering a a higher payment for that raw material, a price they can pay due to their specific market share thus preventing a company from even starting up, both the company and supplier then would run afoul of anti trust laws.” Again, there is no raw material denied.
The defendants in this case would neither suffer nor prosper based on the demise of X. You say that for the application of the law “the collective can materially gain,” yet neither you nor X can express what that gain would be.
Laws protecting competition apply to competitors: there are none here.
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