The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) is shutting down its brand safety unit following an antitrust lawsuit filed by Elon Musk's X platform over an alleged advertising boycott.

The lawsuit, filed earlier this week, claimed that members of the Global Alliance for Responsible Advertising illegally colluded to collectively withhold "billions of dollars in advertising revenue" from X. GARM members including Unilver, Mars, CVS and Orsted were also named as defendants in the case.

According to reports from Business Insider, the advertising trade group advised members that it would be "discontinuing" the GARM initiative, citing the not-for-profit group's limited resources to fight the case.

The WFA told members that it was confident of its compliance, and planned to contest the allegations in court.

Arielle Garcia, the director of intelligence for adtech industry watchdog Check My Ads took to LinkedIn to assert that the the WFA's decision to shut down GARM was "horrible news for advertisers, and for the communities they serve".

"Now, more than ever, advertisers must not let Elon’s bullying rattle them: they must stand firm in their right to adopt standards that meet their own needs, and to decide what’s best for their brands and their businesses," she said. 

The decision comes less than two months after GARM launched its new sustainability framework in partnership with Ad Net Zero, providing advertisers, media owners and agencies with voluntary standards to improve consistent, comparable measurement of greenhouse gas emissions from digital, television, print, audio, outdoor and cinema channels. IAB Australia chief Gai Le Roy has confirmed that the frameworks will be taken up by industry in the local market.

The GARM initiative was first founded in 2019 to address the challenges of illegal or harmful content and social media, and create voluntary frameworks that would provide shared definitions around brand safety and misinformation.

It's more than 100 members include major advertisers as well as agency Holdcos and ad tech platforms. The initiative was not intended to advise members on where to spend budgets, and per the WFA's website was not involved in naming platforms or measuring or categorising the relative brand safety of content.

As of Friday morning, several pages on WFA's website relating to GARM are not available. Mi3 has contacted the WFA for comment.