The world's biggest brands are looking to control online speech

A stunning new House committee report reveals a level of “corporate collusion” aimed at controlling conservative speech online.

The House Judiciary Committee released the shocking report Wednesday, exposing how companies purporting to be members of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) leadership team allegedly tried to “deprive” conservatives of money advertising, thus violating anti-monopoly laws, according to the president of the Judiciary. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

I WILL SEE: @Jim_JordanOpening Statement of Today's Hearing Examining Anticompetitive Practices by Woke Advertisers and Companies. https://t.co/xFyNBJ5ghw

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) July 10, 2024

“Through GARM, major corporations, advertising agencies and industry associations engaged in boycotts and other coordinated actions to demonetize platforms, podcasts, media and other content deemed disfavored by GARM and its members,” the report says . “Such collusion can have the effect of eliminating a variety of content and viewpoints available to consumers.”

The sentence report was released just before a hearing with expected testimony from Herrish Patel, president of Unilever USA, and Christian Juhl, global CEO of GroupM. The report even caught the attention of X owner Elon Musk, who found it “Extremely worrying!”

Extremely worrying! https://t.co/EF5shOhMf5

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 10, 2024

“GARM, an initiative of the powerful World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), has enormous market power in the advertising industry,” the Judiciary Committee explained in a press release announcing the report, titled ” GARM'S Harm: How the World's Biggest Brands Seek”. to monitor online speech.”

Rob Rakowitz, the group's leader and co-founder allegedly “provided … inaccurate information” repeatedly and contradicted documented evidence obtained by the committee.

“Through its immense influence of power, GARM allegedly engages in far more serious activities than its stated goal of promoting 'brand safety', even deviating into content moderation on television, networks social media and the Internet,” according to the press release. “Documents obtained by the committee reveal the extent of GARM's collaboration among some of the most powerful global corporations to silence conservative media, including Breitbart News.”

Who is GARM? pic.twitter.com/aowkt2K2lI

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) July 10, 2024

The press release explained that GroupM's strategy “when it comes to media that offers disfavored views, even before the media can somehow 'cross over.'[] the line,” is to closely monitor outlets until it finds something that warrants placing the entire outlet on a list of websites that GroupM clients cannot advertise on, called the blacklist.

According to the press release:

One of GARM's proposed solutions to control media advertising was to create a system where only “legitimate news” received funding and all advertising revenue was diverted away from so-called “disinformation sites”. To sort out “legitimate news,” GARM broke away from the leadership team and approached outside organizations such as the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and NewsGuard. […]

On the contrary, the list of “less risky sites” included left-wing news sources such as BuzzFeed News and HuffPost. NewsGuard has also come under scrutiny for using incorrect fact-checking in its work, for example flagging accurate stories about the COVID-19 lab leak theory and a Gaza hospital explosion from a Hamas rocket failed as disinformation. NewsGuard regularly targets conservative media outlets with the alleged goal of limiting advertising revenue.

The group also targeted podcaster Joe Rogan for his views on the COVID-19 vaccine.

Senior Staff Writer
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida, where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.

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