A US federal judge has dismissed X Corp's antitrust lawsuit against a group of major advertisers, closing off the company's attempt to recover advertising revenue lost following Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter in 2022.
US District Judge Jane Boyle ruled that X had failed to show it suffered harm under federal competition laws, dismissing the case with prejudice. The lawsuit, filed in a Texas court in 2024, accused companies including Unilever, Mars and Danish renewable energy firm Orsted, along with the World Federation of Advertisers, of conspiring to deprive X of billions of dollars in revenue by co-ordinating advertising pullbacks through a WFA initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media.
X argued the advertisers had acted against their own economic self-interest in a deliberate effort to strangle the platform financially, claiming this constituted a violation of US antitrust law. The defendants denied wrongdoing, arguing they had made independent business decisions about where to allocate advertising budgets.
Boyle sided with the defendants. In her written opinion, she noted that the WFA body at the centre of the alleged conspiracy "did not buy advertising space from X to sell to advertisers nor did it, in such an arrangement, tell X not to sell directly to its customers." She concluded: "The very nature of the alleged conspiracy does not state an antitrust claim, and the court therefore has no qualm dismissing with prejudice."
The backdrop is significant. Within a year of Musk completing his $44bn acquisition of Twitter, advertising revenue had fallen by more than half as brands paused or reduced spending on the platform. Musk had reinstated banned accounts and loosened content restrictions, prompting concerns among advertisers about brand safety. At the time of filing, Musk posted: "We tried being nice for 2 years and got nothing but empty words. Now, it is war."
The dismissal with prejudice means X cannot refile the same claims. X had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.
