Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday said he is opening an investigation into the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) to determine whether the trade group's members plotted to boycott "certain social media platforms." The press release doesn't name social media platforms, but one likely to be targeted is Elon Musk's X, which filed an antitrust lawsuit against the WFA in August, alleging advertisers orchestrated a "systematic illegal boycott" of the platform.

Trade organizations and companies cannot collude to block advertising revenue from entities they wish to undermine," Paxton said in a release. "Today's document request is part of an ongoing investigation to hold WFA and its members accountable for any attempt to rig the system to harm organizations they might disagree with.

The WFA's members include global brands such as IBM, The Coca-Cola Company, and CVS Health. Several of those members have ceased or dramatically scaled back what they spend on advertising on X since Elon Musk's takeover of the company. Especially in November 2023, after reports from the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Media Matters suggested that Elon Musk's X failed to moderate its platform and remove illegal or hateful content, X lost advertisers like Apple and Disney. Then, when a White House spokesperson condemned Elon Musk for one of his personal posts - which this one called "antisemitic and racist" -

Since then, X has filed lawsuits against many advertisers and ad groups, alleging these international brands collectively are conspiring not to cut their ad spend individualistically but rather withhold billions of dollars of potential revenue from X. Now Texas's Attorney General appears to be bringing an investigation of his own.

"It's still a major problem," said Musk in response to Paxton's Thursday post on X about the advertiser investigation.

Much like X's lawsuit, Paxton homes in on a since-scraped, not-for-profit entity within the WFA, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM. This was an America-based group founded in 2019 that included some of the country's largest advertisers. It created frameworks and definitions for companies to understand hate speech, brand safety, and misinformation.

"Nothing alters the simple fact that GARM was, at every step, voluntary and pro-competitive," stated WFA spokesperson Will Gilroy in an email to TechCrunch. "WFA will continue to fight these allegations and we are confident that the US judicial system will find in our favor."

The AG's investigations ask GARM for copies of and information about the documents, which may help determine whether it instructed brands to boycott certain platforms that violated its brand safety standards.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino, announcing the lawsuit against advertisers by her platform, cited a July report by the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee as she looked into GARM's practices. That report found:

Through GARM, large corporations, advertising agencies and industry associations boycotted and otherwise coordinated action to demonetize platforms, podcasts, news outlets and other content deemed disfavored by GARM and its members. In effect, this collusion can eliminate a wide range of content and viewpoints available to consumers.

GARM shut its doors in August, citing not having the means or money to keep it running, days after X sued.

In the months leading up to this investigation, some advertisers have actually resumed ad spending on X, though at much lower rates than before. Comcast, IBM, Disney, and other major brands reportedly returned to Musk's platform this year. In addition, X said in October that it agreed to a settlement with Unilever regarding a renewal of its ad spend and that the social network would dismiss its claims against Unilever, one of the companies X named as participating in the supposed boycott.
X declined to comment on the matter.