Congressional Report Accuses Jordan, Musk Of Weaponizing Gov’t To Silence Critics

Say That Again

from the finally-calling-out-the-truth dept

For quite some time now, we’ve pointed out how Jim Jordan has weaponized the government to suppress speech. Quite frequently, he seems to be doing this in coordination with Elon Musk. And yet, somehow, it felt like we were the only ones calling this out. So many in the media seem fine repeating the lie that Elon Musk is a free speech supporter, or that Jordan is trying to stop the “weaponization of the government,” rather using it to his advantage.

So it was interesting to see that the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee recently released a detailed report calling out Jim Jordan and Elon Musk as colluding to misrepresent reality in a push to silence criticism.

The 53-page report, titled “Delusion of Collusion: How the House Republican Majority Abused Oversight Powers to Protect Elon Musk and Silence His Critics,” exhaustively documents how Jordan launched a sham investigation in what appears to be a clear attempt to intimidate advertisers and bully them into subsidizing Musk’s ExTwitter, while falsely claiming it was about fighting “collusion.”

Because the Democrats tend to be inept and incompetent in explaining reality to people, Rep. Jerry Nadler released the report on New Year’s Eve where it basically got zero attention. As far as I can tell, the only news report to cover it was a small legal antitrust trade publication. By the time the ball dropped in Times Square hours after the report had been released, it had effectively disappeared.

However, it deserves way more attention for all of the nonsense it puts into the public record, specifically focusing on Jordan and Musk’s effort to attack GARM, a small non-profit that just worked with advertisers and social media platforms to encourage the platforms to protect the brand safety of advertisers. As we’ve covered, that attack was successful. Even though his ExTwitter had put out a press release talking about how excited they were to “rejoin” GARM just weeks earlier, Musk went on to sue GARM, which was almost immediately shut down by the World Federation of Advertisers.

The report breaks down how this was a clear case of Jordan and Musk weaponizing the government to silence critical speech.

By March 2023, Twitter’s value had fallen from $44 billion to $20 billion. The reason for this decline in value is no mystery, given the facts outlined above. Nevertheless, the Majority launched an investigation into the advertisers which have declined to spend money on the platform, accusing them of “colluding” to hurt the company’s profits. Since then, the Majority has spent countless dollars and hours of staff time trying to figure out why advertisers might be hesitant to risk their brands’ reputations on a platform whose owner told them, in November 2023, to “Go fuck yourself.”

Chairman Jordan’s so-called investigation culminated in a July 2024 “interim report” which used cherry picked documents and misleading transcript excerpts to suggest that the committee had uncovered evidence of “collusion” when in fact the very opposite is true. In fact, the complete and contextualized documents and testimony show that the Global Alliance for Responsible Media and its member companies were engaged in a pro-competitive effort to address the substantial brand risk that harmful online content poses to advertisers and to consumers.

Chairman Jordan’s report had an audience of one: Elon Musk. In fact, the entire report seems like pretext for a lawsuit Musk filed against various advertising entities and ultimately to silence the advertisers who expressed concern about content on his platform. The resources of this Committee should not be directed to further pad a billionaire’s bottom line. In contrast, this minority report is intended for the American public, who are entitled to the truth about this investigation and about Chairman Jordan’s true aims and abuse of congressional oversight power.

It’s hard to imagine a more blatant example of a powerful government official abusing his authority to carry water for a political ally and major GOP donor. The fact that Jordan is doing this while sanctimoniously claiming to be fighting the “weaponization” of government is beyond parody.

As the report calls out:

For the past 20 months, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has abused his oversight power and the rule of law to push an agenda that would pervert the free market and undermine individual companies’ independent decisions as to where to place advertisements online. The spread of illegal, harmful, abusive, and false and misleading content online results in actual harm, both online and offline. We are left to conclude that the Majority’s ultimate goal was not to conduct antitrust oversight as they claim, but rather to silence criticism of harmful online content and those who promote it, deter content moderation, and protect the ability to use mis- and disinformation campaigns to achieve political ends.

Ya think? This was obvious from the beginning, but almost entirely ignored by the credulous media that uncritically amplified Jordan’s false claims.

The report thoroughly debunks Jordan’s flimsy antitrust pretext and exposes his true aim: strong-arming companies into boosting Musk and his political allies.

It also calls out the irony of the committee that claims to be fighting weaponization, actually being the chief party weaponizing the government against speech:

The Majority is engaging in a transparently political effort to use the antitrust laws to benefit their allies by conferring upon them outcomes that they could not otherwise achieve in the marketplace. This is not just a misuse of the antitrust laws, but fundamentally subverts the goals of those laws. The irony could not be greater. While spending most of this Congress attacking the Biden administration’s so-called weaponization of government, the Majority here is trying to weaponize the antitrust laws under a highly dubious theory to override legitimate market outcomes.

It also calls out the MAGA trend of falsely claiming that content moderation or boycotts could possibly violate the First Amendment:

Finally, the Majority bandies about words like censorship, in a misguided effort to evoke the First Amendment. But as the Majority well knows, the First Amendment only applies to government action. And in this case, the only governmental burdening of speech is the Majority’s onslaught against GARM and its members. It is an effort to bully the advertisers into subsidizing firms whose content moderation policies put brands and businesses at risk. It is an attempt to hijack free speech, as well as antitrust, for political purposes.

If reality mattered, this report would be a bombshell. But, again, everyone seems to be living in a fog of nonsense, where anything the MAGA world says it’s doing, no matter how obviously false, is treated as genuine. And any time anyone calls out the lack of clothes on the emperor, it’s dismissed as sour grapes or “derangement syndrome.”

The report is thorough and detailed. It explains why companies might not want to advertise on ExTwitter for totally legitimate business reasons, calling out examples of big brands having their ads show up next to “pro-Nazi” content, and noting that consumers (the marketplace again!) will often punish companies whose advertisements support such hatred:

Now consider the category of misinformation that the Majority alleges GARM’s members misapply to the detriment of conservative-voiced content. The GARM framework defines misinformation as “the presence of verifiably false or willfully misleading content that is directly connected to user or societal harm.” Consumer surveys suggested that inappropriate content, including misinformation, negatively affects brand trust and purchase behavior. These results explained, in part, why advertisers are concerned about the nexus between brand safety and misinformation. Additional studies examined this nexus in more detail. A 2024 article in NATURE reported the results of an experiment which demonstrated that consumers are likely to reduce purchases from firms that advertise on websites that publish misinformation compared to firms that do not. Unlike the surveys which measured intention to change purchase behavior, subjects in this experiment made actual economic choices. Additional research on consumer reaction to misinformation was provided by the IPG Mediabrands and Zefr MAGNA Media Trials Study which found that “advertising next to misinformation led to wasted dollars for brands, eroded brand perception, and negatively impacted KPIs [key performance indicators].”

The challenges of directing ad placement to trustworthy sites and away from misinformation sites continues to loom large. The 2024 NATURE study found that of the 100 most active advertisers, an astounding 79.8 percent that used digital advertising platforms had advertisements placed in online misinformation outlets in a given week. The authors attributed the problem to the use of such platform systems that allocate advertising to such websites. Another study, by the Pew Research Center, suggested that “for every $2.16 in digital ad revenue sent to legitimate newspapers, U.S. advertisers are sending $1 to misinformation websites.”

In sum, online advertising is very important for advertisers and for the websites that provide and host content, many of whose business models depend on it. But harmful content is challenging the business models of advertisers, content providers, and platforms alike. Consumers associate the online content with the brands that advertise there. When a brand is advertised near harmful content, its value is undermined because most consumers believe that the brand knowingly chose that content and site for its advertising.

In other words, there are completely and totally understandable business reasons for advertisers to stop advertising on ExTwitter.

And all GARM was trying to do was help advertisers make sure that they didn’t risk angering customers by having ads appear next to highly controversial content. And they did so in a way that everyone involved knew was just creating more information and allowing advertisers (and social media platforms) to make their own final decisions:

GARM’s voluntary frameworks, which the biggest social media platforms helped develop, provide structures for analysis and created a common lexicon. Much like the terms of art in marketing or expressions in mathematics, a shared terminology facilitates communication that is foundational for constructive working relationships across organizations. Such terminology enhances transparency, making market transactions more efficient. The buyer better understands what sellers are offering in terms of brand safety and the seller better understands what buyers want. Both advertisers and platforms benefit from this common approach and independent decision making is improved.

Crucially, the frameworks do not dictate advertising outcomes. Applying those frameworks is an inherently subjective exercise that includes tailoring to the specific requirements of the brands and leads to outcomes that vary across GARM’s members. Juhl described how GroupM customizes its work in ad placement to reflect the specific needs of their advertiser clients:

GroupM works to place our clients’ ads on media pursuant to their goals, preferences, and target audiences, and we continually engage with our clients to understand their particular risk tolerance levels. These risk tolerances shift due to our clients’ own business conditions and how they view the current political and social environments. Clients shift priorities very quickly and it is our job to execute their strategy with speed and precision. We always follow our client brand’s ad placement wishes.

It is also important to recognize that the application of the GARM frameworks usually operates within a firm’s set of marketing policies and hence was only one consideration among many. These marketing policies vary by firm. Most were created before the GARM frameworks and continue to shape online advertising choices.

But, Jim Jordan and Elon Musk bent over backwards to pretend that it was “illegal collusion” that violates antitrust law. And this report says that’s ridiculous to anyone who looked at all the facts.

The Majority’s July 2024 Interim Report offers no direct evidence of an agreement among GARM and its members. Mere status as a member of GARM would not, without more, support a finding of a conspiracy. Consistent with the key Supreme Court precedents Matsushita Elec. Industrial Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp.1 and Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp., a plaintiff would have to “present evidence tending to show that association members, in their individual capacities, consciously committed themselves to a common scheme designed to achieve an unlawful objective.” In contrast, GARM and its members are absolutely clear that their advertising decisions are made independently. As Unilever USA President Patel testified during the hearing,

I want to be very clear on one crucially-important fact. Unilever and Unilever alone controls our advertising spending. No platform has the right to our advertising dollars. As we look across the available advertising inventory, recognizing we do not have unlimited money to spend on advertising, we choose the channels, the platforms, and the outlets that give us the greatest commercial benefit for our advertising investments.

During questioning Patel further confirmed that, “A hundred percent, Unilever makes its own decisions,” and does not follow any outside group’s direction to avoid any outlet. This sentiment is echoed by GARM’s Rakowitz during his transcribed interview:

Q: But just to nail down that point, GARM doesn’t tell individual members—

A: Absolutely not.

Q: —what to do?

A: No, we do not.

Q: Or where to place ads?

A: No, we do not.

Q: Or where to avoid placing ads?

A: We do not.

These comments are consistent with the advertiser decision making process discussed in Part IIB.

As the report highlights, nothing about this represents a serious antitrust inquiry.

A serious antitrust inquiry would need to address the ease of reaching and sustaining an agreement. Two major obstacles—large numbers of participants and participants with diverse interests—have long been recognized by antitrust law as making collusive schemes less likely. In the GARM setting, overcoming these obstacles would loom large.

The real reason companies stopped advertising on ExTwitter is no grand conspiracy to suppress free speech. It was a simple business calculation. Advertising there is bad for business:

The Majority focused on alleged harm caused by the demonetization of its favored conservative-voices. They assert that this loss of revenue is caused by a large conspiracy involving GARM and its 100 plus members to suppress conservative-voiced online platforms and outlets by stopping advertising support. But the most compelling explanation for this revenue decline is apolitical. Advertisers want to attract and retain customers. When their advertising is placed next to harmful content the advertisement instead repels customers. Not surprisingly, advertisers gravitate to outlets that pose less risk to their brands. Again, this isn’t rocket science.

Instead, the much more obvious conclusion is the one that we’ve been shouting from the rooftops for the past few years: that it’s Jordan who is weaponizing the government to silence speech:

As with other of this Committee’s recent investigations, we are left to conclude that its ultimate goal was not to “conduct[] oversight of the adequacy and enforcement of U.S. antitrust laws” as they claim, but rather to silence criticism of harmful online content and those who promote it, deter content moderation, and protect the ability to use mis- and disinformation campaigns to achieve political ends. The Majority’s desperate ploy to launder their failed censorship arguments through an antitrust framing itself fails. The Majority’s actions have intimidated organizations who call attention to the prevalence of hate, disinformation, and other harmful or unlawful content online. Fostering a more transparent, accountable, and responsible digital environment is not only lawful, it is good for businesses, consumers and the general public. Chairman Jordan’s investigation and others like it will undermine this work and lead to the further deterioration of our information ecosystem and will threaten free speech.

Antitrust is not about choosing winners and losers. It is about ensuring a fair fight. In this instance we see that the Majority is willing to condemn any outcome that they do not like as being unfair and the outcome appears to involve both a category of supposed victims as well as a particular victim—X. In fact, this investigation originated after the Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, Chairman Jordan, and Elon Musk were talking and Musk said, “‘by the way, there’s this organization GARM, because GARM is harm.’ [sic] I [Jordan] never forgot that sentence.” No he did not. Jordan embarked on an investigation whose outcome was a foregone conclusion and for which the resulting report’s title [GARM’s Harm] was effectively supplied by Musk himself. Despite all of the investigation’s shortcomings, it excelled in one regard—providing taxpayer funded discovery for the richest man in the world and one of Trump’s biggest donors. A lawsuit launched by X just days after the Majority’s interim report was released began by touting that the conduct was “the subject of an active investigation” by the House Judiciary Committee before reproducing the fruits of the subcommittee’s fishing expedition in the form of a document demand. Perhaps this assault on legitimate business activity seems worth it to the Majority.

It’s pretty scathing as Congressional reports go.

In the end, this sordid saga illustrates the dangerous way that accusations of “censorship” and “collusion” are being cynically weaponized to bully companies into amplifying favored political content. Jordan and Musk’s campaign against GARM sets a troubling precedent.

By abusing the power of Congressional oversight to intimidate advertisers and platforms, they are effectively arguing that companies have an obligation to subsidize and support any speech, no matter how hateful or harmful, or else be accused of “censorship.” It’s an attempt to pervert the free market to serve their political agenda.

But as this report makes clear, advertisers’ decisions on where to place their ads are driven by legitimate business considerations about brand safety and consumer sentiment, not some nefarious plot to silence conservatives. The real threat to free speech is not content moderation or advertiser boycotts – it’s government officials like Jim Jordan trying to use their power to dictate what speech must be subsidized and supported.

Sadly, given the current media and political environment, it’s unlikely this report will get the attention it deserves. But for anyone who cares about the future of online speech, platform governance, and the abuse of government authority, it’s essential reading. It shines a harsh light on Jordan and Musk’s cynical, dishonest campaign and the damage it has done to free speech and the free market.

Filed Under: advertising, antitrust, brand safety, collusion, elon musk, free speech, house judiciary committee, intimidation, jerry nadler, jim jordan, weaponization subcommittee
Companies: garm, twitter, x