Rumble CEO joins Musk’s antitrust lawsuit over ‘harmful monopoly’

Social media platform Rumble has joined X Elon Musk filing a lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), accusing the global advertising group of violating antitrust laws by illegally boycotting certain companies and platforms.

Rumble CEO and founder Chris Pavolvski said in an appearance on FOX Business Network:Big money show“The World Federation of Advertisers, which formed the GARM consortium to provide services to its member advertisers, has misused brand safety standards to effectively boycott certain platforms.

“When you have a huge consortium that creates a monopoly on all the big ad budgets that dictate this brand safety standard, they can now discriminate against certain voices on other platforms,” Pavolvski said.

“If they don’t like what might happen on Rumble or X, they can say we’re not going to touch that. Which drives up advertising rates because now they only have access to a certain part of the market, and then they drive up prices for their shareholders and brands,” he explained.

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“This hurts advertisers and shareholders, results in higher agency fees, and hurts Rumble creators, viewers, and the Rumble platform,” he added.

Pavolski said that the Sherman Act, federal antitrust law which prohibits anti-competitive agreements and conduct that monopolizes or attempts to monopolize a market, prohibits the type of conduct that GARM engaged in.

“When you have a monopoly and you create a monopoly and you amass all this power and control to dictate certain standards of how you’re going to spend that money, that’s not a free market. Sherman Act doesn’t allow it. So it’s illegal,” he said.

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“There are different rules and standards when you’re a monopoly. And what the World Federation of Advertisers has done is create a monopoly to essentially tell… all of these advertisers how they should spend their money based on certain speech. So you can’t use the First Amendment in a way that you have a monopoly that dictates how you’re going to allocate funds. That’s bad for their advertisers,” Pavlovski added.

GARM was established in 2019 by the World Federation of Advertisers. It brings together advertisers, agencies, media companies, platforms and industry organizations.

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GARM claims to be an “apolitical” and “voluntary” organization and provides its members with access to “resources and information on best practices so they can learn where their advertising investments and avoid placing them next to illegal or harmful content that could damage the reputation of their brands.”

In discussions about his approach to freedom of speech, GARM leader and co-founder Rob Rakowitz expressed frustration with the “extremely global interpretation US Constitution“and complained about using the ‘rules of government’ and applying them as literal law from 230 years ago (created exclusively by white men).” With this worldview, GARM placed what he called “an unusual collaboration” on a “higher plane than commercial interests.”

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GARM has been accused of working with major companies to implement advertising restrictions against Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, Spotify, political candidates and news media outlets, including Fox NewsThe Daily Wire and Breitbart News.

FOX Business reached out to the World Federation of Advertisers for comment on the lawsuit against GARM.

Breck Dumas of FOX Business and Andrew Mark Miller of Fox News contributed to this report.