Asking the 5th Circuit to reverse Boyle, X argued that advertisers colluded to boycott X, “eliminat[ing] the independent decision-making that would otherwise force each firm to weigh the competitive benefits of continuing to advertise on the platform, suppressing competitive rivalries and insulating the boycott from market forces. The group boycott targeting X thus distorts competition in multiple markets in clear contravention of the antitrust laws.”
X’s claims relate to the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), an initiative by the World Federation of Advertisers to define violent and obscene content and help advertisers create brand-safety guidelines. The ad industry shut down Garm after Musk filed the lawsuit in 2024, though law professors described X’s legal case as a weak one.
X’s filing yesterday said that GARM “exercised collective power through its rules for membership. As a condition of joining GARM, members agree[d] to adopt GARM solutions to improve business operations.’ For GARM’s advertiser and advertising agency members, that meant agreeing to enforce the implementation of the Brand Safety Standards by the social-media platforms from which they purchased advertising.”
X’s big ad revenue drop
X, then called Twitter, suffered a large drop in advertising revenue after Musk bought the company in October 2022 and made major changes to content moderation. Advertisers stayed away, worried that ads would appear next to antisemitic posts, misinformation, and other objectionable content.
Specific numbers on X ad revenue were hard to come by the past few years because Musk took the company private when he bought Twitter. But X Corp. is now a subsidiary of SpaceX, which recently went public and must report earnings.
SpaceX’s earnings report this week said the company made $367 million in advertising revenue in Q2 2026, down from $426 million in Q2 2025. For the first six months of 2026, ad revenue was $710 million, down from $870 million in the first six months of 2025.
Twitter reported much higher ad revenue before being bought by Musk. “X’s current quarterly ad revenue has dropped even more drastically compared to the last quarter before Musk bought the popular social-media platform,” MediaPost reported. “In the second quarter of 2022, Twitter reported $1.08 billion in ad revenue, roughly $713 million more than Q2 2026.”
