Censorship-industrial complex suffers setback under Musk suit, but critics say he'll 'lose the war'

Eight years after tech billionaire Peter Thiel took credit for bankrupting Gawker by surreptitiously funding former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan's invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against the tabloid news site, his fellow "PayPal mafia" member Elon Musk is doing the same thing in public.

Following media reports Thursday, the World Federation of Advertisers confirmed Friday its Global Alliance for Responsible Media was either gone or going, using the past tense to describe the "voluntary cross-industry initiative created in 2019 to address digital safety" but also saying it "will" or "is making" the decision to discontinue GARM.

"GARM is a small, not-for-profit initiative, and recent allegations that unfortunately misconstrue its purpose and activities have caused a distraction and significantly drained its resources and finances," the statement reads, referring to a new antitrust lawsuit by Musk's X that alleges GARM led an illegal boycott to deprive the platform of ad revenue. 

It was set up after the Facebook-livestreamed Christchurch New Zealand mosque shootings and "a slew of high-profile cases where brands’ ads appeared next to illegal or harmful content, such as promoting terrorism or child pornography – creating both consumer and reputational issues for brands."

GARM has succeeded by providing tools "to help advertisers avoid inadvertently supporting harmful and illegal content, reducing such ads from 6.1% in 2020 to 1.7% in 2023," through which brand owners develop "their own bespoke, brand-specific safety frameworks to ensure that their advertising dollars do not inadvertently support illegal or harmful content that damages their brands," the statement said.

X said it was "proud" to rejoin GARM just a month ago "as part of our deep commitment to brand safety," but CEO Linda Yaccarino said Tuesday the House Judiciary Committee's report on GARM a week later opened her eyes to this "stain on a great industry."

“While GARM may be gone, GARM’s arms – the major advertising agencies – are still here, still receiving billions in federal government contracts, and still weaponizing politically rigged ‘misinformation’ filters to kill ad revenue to websites representing the beliefs of half our country," Foundation for Freedom Online Executive Director Mike Benz told Just the News. 

"What Congress can do next is cut those billions in federal contracts and condition their reinstatement on removing those censorship filters," the former Trump administration State Department official also said.

Wanna stop GARM's censorship? Congress could block billions of dollars in federal contracts to their Big 4 advertiser agencies until they get rid of their "misinformation" blacklist policies https://t.co/wIZ2Drkqi2 pic.twitter.com/ssTSS4IYnR

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) August 4, 2024

Video-sharing platform Rumble sued WFA the same day as X and disinformation watchdog Check My Ads, whose explicit purpose is starving publishers of ad revenue, in December. 

Rumble spokesperson Tim Murtaugh told Just the News the Canadian online video platform, web hosting and cloud services business has started legal discovery against Check My Ads.

The most recent docket activity a month ago shows the parties exchanging filings over whether Rumble even alleged wrongdoing, known as failure to state a claim.

The New York Times and The Guardian each quoted Check My Ads cofounder Claire Atkins predicting the GARM casualty would further alienate X advertisers, without noting Musk threatened to sue the watchdog last fall. 

Check My Ads' other "Terminally Online" cofounder Nandini Jammi, who mocked "spaceboi" Musk for that threat and announced a five-month sabbatical in June, reappeared in a Thursday blog post with Atkins that predicts Musk "will lose the war" – again without noting his threatened lawsuit.

The ramp-up in litigation and related congressional investigations, including House Judiciary probes of GARM and the White House-connected Center for Countering Digital Hate, may determine the financial viability of platforms friendlier to free speech.

But it might also be a game of Whac-A-Mole, in which targeted organizations and initiatives shut down or suspend activities only to reemerge under a different name.

Good chance, this will be like a game of Whack-A-Mole.

GARM will quietly disappear, and a new pop-up NGO or gov. entity will take its place. The WEF isn't done with us yet, and GARM was the brain-child of that organization.

Meanwhile, the frustration of being censored on most… pic.twitter.com/OuVBcQLIZC

— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) August 8, 2024

Critics have alleged the Foreign Malign Influence Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – "activated" nearly two years ago but only publicly disclosed in May 2023 – is a thinly veiled reboot of the Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board, disbanded two years ago after drawing a reputation as an Orwellian "Ministry of Truth."

The board itself may have been inspired by an Atlantic Council report in 2020 by Thomas Warrick and Caitlin Durkovich, who left DHS during the Trump administration, with the latter serving in the Biden White House National Security Council during the board's launch.

The board's executive director Nina Jankowicz, whose defamation lawsuit against Fox News was dismissed last month, started her own "bipartisan" watchdog this spring. Her American Sunlight Project says it will "expose the infrastructure and funding behind the disinformation campaigns" that spread the censorship-industrial complex narrative.

The Global Disinformation Index continues its purported policing of intentionally false narratives despite losing its U.S. taxpayer funding through the State Department 18 months ago, after its near-uniform negative ratings of conservative outlets became known. Congressional Republicans quickly demanded answers from Secretary of State Antony Blinken. 

Conservative publications targeted by GDI and NewsGuard sued State for indirectly funding them in December, while left-leaning Consortium News sued NewsGuard for defamation and the U.S. for outsourced censorship through a "Cyber Command contract" the prior month. The House Oversight Committee is also investigating NewsGuard.

Last fall, Musk called for the disbanding of NewsGuard, whose board includes former CIA and National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden. He made a similarly vague threat against GDI in April in response to an investigation by one of its targets, Unherd.

The DHS-conceived Election Integrity Partnership, whose participants included federal agencies, claimed a 35% success rate in getting social media platforms to take action against purported misinformation in the 2020 election cycle, and Just the News itself was targeted.

While its co-lead at the Stanford Internet Observatory is getting out of the game under the weight of lawsuits and subpoenas – belatedly claiming in late May the EIP had "finished its work" in 2022 – EIP's other co-lead, the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, is continuing its work with the " unwavering support" of the university, UW has said.