Trump's FTC can impose merger state that prohibits the advertising boycots

FTC chairman claimed “serious risk” of ad -boycots

After the purchase of Musk from Twitter, the social network of advertisers lost for various reasons, including changes in the degree of content and an incident in which Musk placed a favorable response to an anti -Semitic tweet and then told the worried advertisers to “fuck yourself”.

FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson said at a conference in April that “the risk of an advertiser Boycot is a pretty serious risk for the free exchange of ideas.”

“If advertisers go into a back room and agree:” We are not going to place our things next to this guy or woman or his or her ideas, “that is a form of coordinated refusal to act,” Ferguson said. “The antitrust laws condemn coordinated refusal to act. Now of course, due to the first amendment, we have no categorical antitrust ban on boycots. When a boycott stops being economic for the purposes of the antitute laws and the activity of the first amendment, the rights is not super clear -[it’s] Kind of a 'We know when we see it' kind of things. “

The FTC website Says that every individual company that acts in itself “can refuse to do business with another company, but an agreement between competitors not to do business with targeted people or companies can be an illegal boycott, especially if the group of competitors who work together has market power.” The examples given on the FTC -Web page are usually about price competition and do not go on the widespread practice of companies that choose where they can place advertisements based on worries about their brands.

Today we contacted the FTC about the merger review and will update this article if it gives a comment.

X's advertisement -right case

X's lawsuit focuses on a World Federation of Advertisers Initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (Garm), a program that has now been destroyed in which Omnicom and Interpublic participated. X itself was part of the Garm Initiative, which was closed after X had brought the lawsuit. X claimed that the defendants “to” withdraw billions of dollars of advertisements in the collective. “

The world federation of advertisers said last month in a court that Garm was being established “to bring clarity and transparency to separate definitions and insights into advertising and brand safety in the context of social media. For example, certain advertisers did not want platforms to advertise their brands to advertise their brands that could have a negative influence on their brands.”