The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether roughly a dozen prominent advertising and advocacy groups violated antitrust law by coordinating boycotts among advertisers that did not want their brands to appear alongside hateful online content, four people familiar with the inquiries said.
The inquiries include the agency’s previously reported investigation of Media Matters, a liberal advocacy organization that has published research on hateful and antisemitic content on X, the social media company owned by Elon Musk.
Ad Fontes Media, a group that rates the quality of news sources, received an investigative letter from the FTC on May 20 demanding information about its business in relation to an investigation about “possible collusion,” the organization’s CEO, Vanessa Otero, said.
At least a dozen other organizations received such letters, three of the people said. The groups include organizations that help brands choose how to position ads across the internet and watchdog groups that have sought to call attention to hateful content online.
The FTC’s new chair, Andrew Ferguson, has vowed to crack down on what he says is censorship of conservatives on social media.