Elon Musk's X Expands Lawsuit Against Advertisers, Adds Amazon's Twitch as Defendant

Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, has added Amazon’s Twitch livestreaming platform as a defendant in its ongoing lawsuit alleging that advertisers illegally conspired to boycott the platform, withholding billions of dollars in advertising revenue.

Business Insider reports that Elon Musk’s X has expanded its legal battle against advertisers by adding Twitch, the Amazon-owned video streaming platform, as a defendant in its ongoing lawsuit. The complaint, originally filed in August, accuses members of the now-defunct Global Alliance of Responsible Media (GARM) of illegally colluding to withhold advertising revenue from the platform.

X’s decision to include Twitch in the lawsuit indicates that the company has no intention of backing down from its legal fight, despite the closure of GARM days after the original suit was filed. The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which led the GARM initiative, has stated that it intends to contest the allegations in court and is confident in its adherence to competition rules.

The amended lawsuit alleges that at least 18 GARM members, including Twitch, Mars, CVS Health, and the energy company Ørsted, stopped running ads on Twitter between November and December of 2022. Specifically, X claims that Twitch has not purchased any ads on the platform in the United States and has only spent a small amount elsewhere in the world since November 2022.

While some advertisers have begun to return to X, possibly due to Musk’s growing political influence following Donald Trump’s U.S. election win, the platform has yet to fully recover to pre-acquisition levels of advertiser demand. Data analyzed by market intelligence firm Sensor Tower revealed that despite an 800 percent increase in U.S. ad spend from X’s top 100 advertisers in the week following November 6, these advertisers still spent 64 percent less compared to the same week in 2022.