A House Judiciary Committee has released a report showing that a cartel of woke advertisers and brands have worked together to demonetize content disfavored by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).

Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-OH) committee has published an interim staff report titled, “”GARM’s Harm: How the World’s Biggest Brands Seek to Control Online Speech.”

Formed by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) in 2019, GARM was ostensibly created to help its members achieve what it calls “brand safety.”

But the House Judiciary Committee has found that members of the alliance participated in boycotts and other coordinated action to demonetize specific platforms, podcasts, news outlets and other content that GARM disfavored.

The WFA controls nearly $1 trillion in ad spending annually and GARM includes every major ad agency holding company in its membership.

Although GARM claims it does not impact content moderation policies or rules dictating what content can appear online, the Committee says its investigation showed several instances of GARM’s efforts to remove and defund certain content or voices.

For instance, emails show that GARM targeted Twitter/X by directing its members to stop all paid advertisement on the platform after it was purchased by Elon Musk.

The Committee also found that GARM also attempted to pressure Spotify into censoring Joe Rogan for his views on the covid-19 vaccine.
Other documents obtained by the Committee showed a clear anti-conservative bias among members of the GARM Board of Directors, also known as its Steer Team.

Conservative media outlets like Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Wire drew the ire of the alliance with some employees discussing placing these outlets on exclusion lists.

The House Judiciary Committee will continue its investigation into the companies involved as well as GARM’s future plans to automate censorship through the use of AI.