A few weeks ago House Republicans released a 40-page report blasting GARM and its parent, the WFA, for illegal collusion and restraint of trade. The report—
Wait. Who is GARM? I'm glad you asked. GARM is the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, an initiative of the World Federation of Advertisers. The Republican report is here.
Second question: should you care? The answer is pretty definitively no. I read the report when it came out—most of it, anyway, until I couldn't take any more—and there's nothing there. Oh, there are lots and lots of words, but when you try to boil them down into actual allegations of misconduct, almost nothing is left. A member once asked a question at a meeting. GARM's head once made an equivocal statement about something. A company once asked for guidance about advertising on Twitter.
Hold on. Twitter, you say? Yes indeed. You might wonder why House Republicans care about GARM in the first place, and the answer is that Elon Musk is mad at them because lots of companies belonging to GARM have stopped advertising on Twitter. So Republicans did Elon a solid by using their congressional subpoena authority to dig up some dirt.
In other words, it's not a coincidence that today, four weeks after the report was released, Twitter has sued GARM for harming their business via an allegedly coordinated advertising boycott. Republicans had already done the oppo research for him.
And you'll never guess where Twitter filed its lawsuit. Are you ready? The Northern District of Texas! Specifically, Wichita Falls, where it will be heard by Republican favorite Reed O'Connor. O'Connor has ruled in the past against gay marriage, Obamacare, COVID vaccines for Navy SEALS, religious nondiscrimination, and, notably, is already the judge in Elon Musk's lawsuit against Media Matters:
The most significant thing about X's lawsuit against GARM are not the allegations, but the Texas judge: Reed O'Connor. He also is overseeing X's Media Matters suit and, in an extraordinary move, allowed discovery to start BEFORE a motion to dismiss was ruled on. That allowed for vast amounts of broad and costly data collection from Media Matters, which the group compared to "harassment," leading to layoffs due to crushing litigation costs — again, before the suit's merit's were even decided.
This whole thing is yet another fusillade in the endless Republican war against supposed censorship of conservative speech. There never turns out to be anything to it except for the fact that Republicans rely so heavily on disinformation these days that even modest fact checking is bound to hit them a lot harder than Democrats. As for Twitter, advertisers have obviously backed off the platform because Musk has turned it into a risky cesspool that they're afraid could backfire on them at any moment. Nor do I imagine it helped when Musk told advertisers "Go fuck yourself" if they didn't like his inflammatory posts.
So that's that. Musk was mad about his loss of advertising. Republicans came to the rescue by issuing subpoenas. And now Musk is using the information they uncovered to file a suit in front of a notoriously right-wing judge. Nice little racket, no?
just don't call it lawfare
this is why i refuse to use twitter or buy a tesla
Me, too.
Maybe Musk can sue all of us as well?
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Money used to be the mother’s milk of politics.
But Republicans have succeeded so phenomenally well at shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars into the pockets of right-wing cranks like Musk that money is no longer a constraint.
For the GOP, lies are now the mother’s milk of politics.
It’s why Murdoch gladly forked over a billion dollars to continue spewing lies on Fox News. And why Musk paid a fortune to convert a popular social media platform into a cesspool of mendacity.
Some judges enjoy consistently being overturned on appeal -- you know, like Trump favorite, Aileen Cannon -- because it's virtue-signaling to the Federalist as to future SCOTUS appointees. As we all know, the qualifications for SCOTUS is no longer about quality but about fidelity towards the values and ideas contained within Project 2025. Project 2025 is their credo and reflects an aspirational doctrine.
It's time to ship Musk off to Mars, apologies to Martians who, in the future, shall be called Muskovites. Hopefully we'll be able to
foolconvince some of these judges to hop aboard.Gefilte fish.
https://resize.indiatvnews.com/en/resize/newbucket/1200_-/2022/07/elon-musk-1658231898.jpg
aka pasty white fish turd floating in gelatinous goo.
Here's that lawfare conservatives have accused others of waging. What a shocker, another case of projection. Every accusation is an admission.
Here's the story behind Musk v. GARM. GARM violated the to-be-adhered-to-in-every-context "do whatever you want as long as it doesn't interfere any way with Elon's freedom to do whatever the hell he wants every moment of every day" principle.
Question: should you care? It depends. If Elon lived in his parent's basement, then don't care. But if Elon is the richest person on the planet, then care.
Musk helped push Tesla when he bought into it.
SpaceX has been able to do some amazing things in a short time.
Then there's the "Boring Company" and the Hyperloop. For the former, it will always be expensive to dig a tunnel, for the latter---sending trains through an evacuated habitrail will never be cheaper than plane old high speed rail.
For the first two, the money was made because of gov't regulations or contracts, esp. early on.
Then he overpaid for twitter....rebranded X....
Cybertruck...a Hummer made love to a Delorean and...
There's more gov't money to build out charging networks, and Tesla leads on that--so that team at Tesla was let go.
But Tesla has to give him billions more because....they're losing sales in China and other manufacturers are catching up in the US???
Companies have to buy ads on X because--I say so???
He's trying to live out a Shakespearean tragedy? Just asking. (and that's not getting into his family situation)
You're aware that ketamine is a hallucinogen, right?
It’s only the beginning of the right wing war on the business community. They learned from the Chinese how to manipulate and intimidate.
Why is anyone still using Twitter, unless they're fans of racists and fascists? How much more is it going to take before you think "well these people may be bad to have anything to do with"?
High time for companies to stop serving Texas. If they have no presence or customers in Texas, even SCOTUS will rule 7-2 that a Texan federal court is the wrong venue to file a claim. Have any web searches point directly to a “this site is unavailable in your jurisdiction” page, like how porn is being blocked here in Virginia by sites unwilling to do tedious ID checks.
Also, fuck Justin above. Once a troll, always a troll.
It's an intimidation suit, like the one against Media Matters. It's meant to make it costly to criticize Musk in a way that could cost him business.
They can probably overturn whatever nonsense O'Connor puts out, but it will take a long time and a lot of money - and that's the point.
Any reform of the judiciary should start with a ban on judge shopping. Consolidate districts and assign judges randomly.
Since St. Stephen pronounced "Reality has a well-known liberal bias", fact-checking has been and is now partisan. In order to be non-partisan, you must recite conservative lies as often as you recite liberal truths, or you're also biased.
/s
He's such a piece of shit.
Is there really nothing that MM attorney's can do? They can't ask for a change of venue, or change of judge?
We now have a different kind of incel: those shunned in *economic* intercourse because they are so noxious no one want to do business with them.
If you want to follow the case, you can see the court docket here:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69017972/x-corp-v-world-federation-of-advertisers/
So far there’s nothing except for the complaint. The bulk of the complaint discusses GARM, which allegedly developed Brand Safety Standards and arranges for advertisers to boycott sellers of advertising space who don’t comply with those standards.
X alleges that it currently complies with the Brand Safety Standards. I don’t believe that because, according to the complaint, advertisers are boycotting X because X does not comply with those standards.
X accuses GARM of restraint of trade. I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the Supreme Court has construed anti-trust law pretty narrowly, mostly to be about firms coordinating to raise or lower prices. Standard setting organizations are mostly immune from liability unless they tilt the process to favor some competitors over others.