The Patriot Post® · Musk Shuts Down Anti-Free-Speech GARM

Score one for freedom of speech. Elon Musk’s decision to have his social media company X (formerly Twitter) file an antitrust lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a euphemism if there ever was one, has resulted in the bad guys tucking tail and slinking away.

The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), the organization behind the now-defunct GARM, tried to play off the decision to back down by claiming it was simply a cash-based decision. Though the WFA “discontinued” GARM, the leftist cabal admitted no guilt.

Irrespective of the WFA’s bogus claims of being non-biased and simply acting in the best interest of businesses, GARM was built to blacklist conservative media sites, thereby preventing them from receiving ad revenue. None of it was done in good faith.

So GARM is now Musk’s first pelt in his war against censorship and in defense of freedom of speech. It was four months ago that Musk threw down the gauntlet in a post on X: “Given the relentless attacks on free speech, I am going to fund a national signature campaign in support of the First Amendment,” he wrote.

The issue that appears to have motivated Musk at the time was NPR CEO Katherine Maher and her sidelining of NPR editor Uri Berliner after he wrote an essay exposing the lack of diversity of thought at the Leftmedia outlet.

Back in 2021, Maher, then the CEO of Wikipedia, was speaking at the Atlantic Council’s 360/Open Summit when she lamented the Constitution’s protection of free speech. “The number one challenge here that we see is, of course, the First Amendment in the United States. [It] is a fairly robust protection of rights and that is a protection of rights both for platforms, which I actually think is very important that platforms have those rights to be able to regulate what kind of content they want on their sites,” she stated.

This same anti-First Amendment sentiment was also expressed by GARM cofounder and leader Rob Rakowitz, who bemoaned the “extreme global interpretation of the US Constitution” and complained about using “‘principles for governance’ and applying them as literal law from 230 years ago (made by white men exclusively).”

While X’s lawsuit presented a significant financial burden, what may have contributed more to WFA’s decision to shutter GARM was the recent court ruling against Google with a similar antitrust lawsuit. Furthermore, since X filed its lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas, it had a good chance of being assigned to Judge Reed O'Connor, who has ruled favorably with conservative-backed efforts against the Biden administration.

In other words, the level playing field likely caused the WFA to believe that the odds were stacked against it. And another point: Imagine what sort of anti-X animus and collusion might have been uncovered among GARM’s internal communications if the trial had proceeded to the discovery phase.

Upon GARM’s disbandment, The Daily Wire issued a statement to the ad industry that reads in part, “As the post-GARM era begins, we seek to engage with advertisers, agencies, platforms, and other shareholders in the advertising industry with a goal of recommitting to objective performance-based metrics. The future of the advertising industry will be what we make it, so let’s engage in this discussion now.”

While GARM is gone, that doesn’t mean that this leftist cabal has given up. It is likely already in the process of developing another speech-infringing mechanism that it will seek to impose upon those who refuse to embrace its leftist ideology.