A US judge has dismissed the antitrust lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X Corp against companies including the LEGO Group.
The lawsuit filed last February accused companies such as the LEGO Group and Mars of illegally boycotting X (formerly Twitter) through an initiative spearheaded by the World Federation of Advertisers, between them withholding ‘billions of dollars in advertising revenue’ from the social media platform. US District Judge Jane Boyle said X ‘failed to show it had suffered any harm under federal antitrust laws’, Reuters reported.
X claimed that the advertisers acted collectively in a conspiracy against the platform, but the defendants argued that they individually elected to reduce or stop ad spending on Twitter over concerns around brand safety. Musk took over Twitter in 2022 and fired employees the defendants said had made the platform ‘welcoming to users and accommodating to family-friendly brands’.
Judge Boyle wrote that ‘the very nature of the alleged conspiracy does not state an antitrust claim, and the court therefore has no qualm dismissing with prejudice’. Antitrust laws in the US are designed to prevent anticompetitive mergers, monopolies and price fixing, such as in cases where competitors may collectively decide to set prices or wages rather than allowing them to be driven by market forces.
The LEGO Group has not posted to X (outside replying to other accounts) since September 2024, but remains active across other social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram.
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