Trump’s FTC blocks ad giants from creating censorship cartel

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has implemented restrictions to prevent advertising giants Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group (IPG) from creating a censorship cartel.

Omnicom Group sparked antitrust concerns last year when it moved to acquire IPG in a $13.5 billion deal, making it the largest global ad agency holding group by revenue, according to Axios. The FTC approved the deal last week with provisions "that prevent Omnicom from engaging in collusion or coordination to direct advertising away from media publishers based on the publishers' political or ideological viewpoints." Omnicom will also be prohibited from directing advertising dollars to publishers based on their political or ideological views.

The FTC’s demands are an attempt to prevent ad giants from creating another cartel like GARM, which dictated the political and ideological landscape until August 2024.

The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) was formed in 2019 by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), a coalition of some of the world’s largest corporations controlling approximately $1 trillion in annual ad spending—roughly 90% of all global advertising. The WFA, whose members include IBM, PepsiCo, Proctor & Gamble, AB InBev, Nestlé, and L'Oréal, created GARM to address “harmful content” and “misinformation.” Predictably, these labels were applied to any publishers that expressed conservative viewpoints.

The year it was created, GARM became a flagship partner of the World Economic Forum (WEF) to “leverage” the WEF’s “existing network.”

GARM used the threat of boycotts to force media outlets and social media platforms to suppress content opposing the woke agenda under the pretext of “combating misinformation.” The cartel punished disobedient companies by withholding nearly all of the world’s ad revenue, forcing them to comply with totalitarian ideologies like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and gender orthodoxy. Most platforms complied with GARM’s woke mandates. Exceptions included video streaming platform Rumble and Elon Musk’s X. The cartel was disbanded in August after a legal challenge from X.

The Joe Rogan incident

In 2022, GARM threatened Spotify with an advertising boycott after podcast host Joe Rogan suggested that young, healthy people should not take the COVID-19 vaccine. According to internal communications, GARM co-founder and leader Rob Rakowitz knew that ordering a boycott of Spotify could get GARM “into hot water by way of anticompetitive and collusive behaviors.”

Rakowitz, an avowed globalist, has previously complained about the US Constitution, which he said is a “literal law from 230 years ago (made by white men exclusively).” Mostly, he has been concerned with the constitutional right to freedom of speech. In an email to WFA CEO Stephan Loerke, Rakowitz was upset that “[p]eople are advocating for freedom of speech online” with anonymity.

“Mr. Rakowitz’s power comes from the members of GARM and their advertising dollars,” explained a report from the House Judiciary Committee. “Because power lies with the members, when members communicate an opinion to Mr. Rakowitz, he is likely to communicate that opinion on to the platforms. Ultimately, when platforms receive the message from Mr. Rakowitz, the companies have the choice to cede to his demands or risk losing their advertising revenue.”  

Coca-Cola was especially concerned about Rogan’s take on the COVID-19 shots, telling Rakowitz that this “particular issue (misinformation) does not exactly fit cleanly into [Coca-Cola’s] policy.”

‘Taking on Elon Musk’

GARM boasted in 2022 about “taking on Elon Musk” shortly after he purchased Twitter (now X), which was a member of GARM at the time. One GARM corporation asked to “arrange a meeting and hear more about [GARM’s] perspectives about the Twitter situation and a possible boycott from many companies.” After holding extensive briefings on Musk, GARM launched a boycott of X and tanked the social media company’s advertising revenue by 80%. 

Even as they celebrated the hit to X’s earnings, WFA and GARM members discussed more strategies to destroy the social media platform that came under Elon Musk's control. One strategy was to send Musk a list of demands regarding which content should or should not be allowed on the platform. If all demands were not met by a specific deadline, GARM would expel Twitter from the cartel and attack it in the media.

Another GARM member expressed concern over Musk’s release of The Twitter Files, which exposed a joint censorship operation between the former Twitter administration and the Biden White House. 

Blocking conservative news outlets

The cartel further discussed strategies on how to block Right-leaning news outlets like Fox News, Breitbart, and The Daily Wire. A member of GARM’s steering committee wrote that he “hated their ideology and bulls**t.” However, he admitted that his corporation “couldn’t really justify blocking them for misguided opinion[s]” so instead “watched them very carefully and it didn’t take long for them to cross the line.”

To back up their claims about conservative sites spewing misinformation, GARM worked with the Biden State Department-funded NewsGuard, which billed itself as a “neutral” and “nonpartisan” news rating site. NewsGuard consistently rates conservative news outlets as “disinformation” while rating Leftist sites, and even false claims, as trustworthy.

GARM also launched a campaign against Fox News for its coverage of Kyle Rittenhouse, a young man who shot and killed two rioters in self-defense in Kenosha, Wisconsin. A jury acquitted Rittenhouse of all charges. But when Fox News said Rittenhouse was not guilty of murder, the WFA was infuriated.

“From a brand-owner perspective, the reasoning which has led us to put pressure and hold to account platforms on hate speech and harmful content should also apply to a media owner,” wrote Loerke. “We’ve always made it clear that the standards which we (GARM) want to see platforms enforce should be valid irrespective of media (even if [the media] has widespread popular support).”

Bad reviews were also labeled ‘misinformation’

GARM worked with the European Union to develop a definition for misinformation. Both entities defined the word as “the presence of verifiably false or willfully misleading content that is directly connected to user or societal harm[.]”

However, GARM did not only seek to censor political “misinformation.” Unilever, for instance, complained to TikTok that a user had called one of its shampoos “straight dish soap,” which the corporation felt qualified as misinformation.

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