Big advertisers sought to mitigate Trump 'contagion' through boycotts: House GOP report

The world's biggest advertisers are getting squeezed between Congress and federal regulators on their history of uniting against purportedly harmful speech, which conservative brands, publishers and politicians portray as illegal and ideological collusion.

The House Judiciary Committee released an interim staff report Friday on the defunct Global Alliance for Responsible Media, alleging the World Federation of Advertisers-created coalition colluded with foreign governments to pressure Twitter to censor Americans' speech after Elon Musk closed his acquisition of the social media company, since rebranded as X.

Copious communications obtained by the GOP-led committee show that European and Australian officials were involved. GARM's co-founder, Robert Rakowitz, told one of them he aimed to have then-former President Trump, whose political future was unsure, "effectively sidelined" while fretting that he couldn't stop the "contagion" of Trump altogether.

"GARM attacked the ability of Americans to access relevant advertisements and online content under the misguided banner of brand safety, preventing consumer preferences from driving market outcomes and replacing those preferences with the wishes of an ideologically motivated cartel," even harming its own members' market opportunities, the committee said. 

WFA shuttered GARM nearly a year ago, days after the committee's first report prompted X to sue WFA, GARM and some members for antitrust violations, and had been under congressional investigation since spring 2023. 

A spokesperson for WFA, which is based in France, said he would provide a response to the committee report Tuesday.

The Federal Trade Commission ordered advertising behemoth Omnicom, as a condition of its $13.5 billion acquisition of The Interpublic Group, to stop any practice that directs advertisers' spending based on a publisher's "political or ideological viewpoints," refuses advertisers' requests to direct spending on that basis or boycotts them on that basis in the U.S.

Omnicom must also stop relying on "exclusion lists" or similar methods of differentiation between publishers in the U.S. "on the basis of political or ideological viewpoints to determine or direct" advertising placements, and must not "knowingly encourage or solicit third parties to create such means of differentiation" on its behalf to circumvent its own ban.

Both WFA members were also founding members of GARM, FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson noted in his statement on the June 23 consent decree. 

House Judiciary's allegations, "if true, paint a troubling picture … that the group sought to marshal its members into collective boycotts to destroy publishers of content of which they disapproved," he said.

Public comment is required before a final vote on the deal by the shorthanded FTC, one of whose three commissioners was recused from the vote on the consent decree, Reuters reported. Trump fired its two Democratic commissioners. 

'My main thing is I need to see Trump and denials effectively sidelined'

The interim staff report, more than half of which is internal GARM documents and its redacted communications among WFA leaders, partners and regulators, portrays Musk's acquisition of Twitter as a perceived existential threat to GARM's agenda.

A redacted WFA official told GARM's initiative lead Rakowitz, now marketing chief at VidMob, that European Commission digital services and platforms head Prabhat Agarwal is "very keen to hear our perspectives on Musk Twitter acquisition" in a Nov. 2, 2022, email.

"He's aware that Twitter's brand safety teams are changing and there could be opportunity, as the Commission engages with Twitter themselves in the context of" the Digital Services Act, "for us to encourage the EC to push Twitter to deliver on GARM asks," the WFA official said. Once GARM approves its plan, it should follow up with Agarwal to share "key messages."

The DSA's stated goal is stopping "illegal and harmful activities online and the spread of disinformation" in Europe. A conservative watchdog sued the State Department at the tail end of the Biden administration for DSA-related discussions internally and with the White House.

Rakowitz was more explicit about GARM's aims in an email thread a week later with Australia eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.

"I believe GARM has significant collective power in helping to hold the platforms to account," Grant wrote, adding she was "happy to try and touch base further whilst I'm stateside" the following week in D.C. "How 'bout this election???????" she said, referring to the congressional midterms in which Republicans took the House and Democrats held the Senate.

Rakowitz shared a PDF and a "short-term" request for information with Grant "in confidence," citing an "ongoing major intervention," and suggested they "line up together around a shared agenda." 

Grant said she was "open to discussing vectors for mutual support."

He responded several emails later to her offhand election mention. "My main thing is I need to see Trump and denials effectively sidelined but I am afraid the contagion is too widespread to protect infection overall," Rakowitz wrote.

The interim staff report interpreted this as GARM's intention to "silence" the protected speech of Americans who shared Trump's views as well as the once and future president himself.

Grant sympathized with Rakowitz's concerns about Trump's "contagion" of U.S. politics. A former congressional staffer in the 1990s, Grant mourned "the societal polarisation and deterioration on so many fronts - and frankly, the violence that permeates discourse-in the name of free speech - not to mention the more obvious Second Amendment."

Musk's Twitter acquisition prompted GARM to share the social media platform's compliance with GARM's standards, the "Platform Adoption Grids," with its members for the first time. 

"Mr. Rakowitz explicitly stated that this material was released to GARM’s members in an effort to track Twitter’s behavior and, if Twitter did not comply with the standards, to encourage GARM’s members not to advertise on Twitter," the report says, which may be illegal under "antitrust caselaw" because the "natural effect" would be restraining trade.

GARM also tested the law when Rakowitz "attempted to directly convey to GARM’s members that they should not be advertising on Twitter," the report says. 

"The bird has gone from freed to fried" with the fallout from Musk's acquisition and "the platform poses real risks," Rakowitz told WFA CEO Stephan Loerke Nov. 11, 2022. 

"I've crafted a message that needs to be posted ASAP and distributed," Rakowitz said. "I have navigated the situation as best as we can in terms of our anticompetitive statues [sic] and have gone as close as possible as we can to saying 'it is unsafe, cease and desist.'"

GARM's own documents from more than two years earlier showed the path it was charting was not supported by consumers, the report says.

Rakowitz told the "Steer Team," GARM's governing board that includes large advertisers, in a June 24, 2020, email it needs to have "a clear set of requests of Facebook from the advertising and media community" in light of some troubling statistics.

Its members comprise 20% of Facebook revenue, but a then-new Gallup poll showed two-thirds of U.S. consumers "value freedom of speech/expression over risks of exposure to harmful content," even though "44% have been in direct contact with harmful content," Rakowitz said.

In spite of this consumer sentiment, GARM contacted Twitter, Facebook and Google a week later to request their "immediate implementation" of a far-reaching plan to "eliminate content that is hateful, denigrating, or discriminatory on all digital platforms and to ensure that advertising is not funding hateful content."

Its members have a "broader objective to work with you to eliminate all categories of harmful content in the fastest possible timing in order to have a safe, productive, and useful media ecosystem for the people we serve," the July 1, 2020, letter said.