The FTC is Investigating Media Matters, Similar Groups

Back in 2023, Elon Musk sued Media Matters over a report it put out claiming X was serving ads next to extremist content.

Elon Musk, as promised, is hauling Media Matters into court — alleging the liberal watchdog group “knowingly and maliciously manufactured” images depicting neo-Nazi and white-nationalist posts on X next to major marketers’ ads.

The complaint seeks unspecified monetary damages, as well as an injunction requiring Media Matters to “immediately delete, take down or otherwise remove” the article titled “As Musk endorses antisemitic conspiracy theory, X has been placing ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to pro-Nazi content.”…

According to X’s lawsuit, Media Matters aimed to portray the Musk-owned social platform “as being dominated by ‘white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories,’” per the complaint. “This November alone Media Matters released over twenty articles (and counting) disparaging both X Corp. and Elon Musk — a blatant smear campaign.”

The lawsuit didn’t claim the ads weren’t served alongside the content in question, rather it argued the outcome was manufactured by Media Matters:

Media Matters executed this plot in multiple steps, as X’s internal investigations have revealed. First, Media Matters accessed accounts that had been active for at least 30 days, bypassing X’s ad filter for new users. Media Matters then exclusively followed a small subset of users consisting entirely of accounts in one of two categories: those known to produce extreme, fringe content, and accounts owned by X’s big-name advertisers. The end result was a feed precision-designed by Media Matters for a single purpose: to produce side-by-side ad/content placements that it could screenshot in an effort to alienate advertisers.

But this activity still was not enough to create the pairings of advertisements and content that Media Matters aimed to produce.

Media Matters therefore resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing its unrepresentative, hand-selected feed, generating between 13 and 15 times more advertisements per hour than viewed by the average X user repeating this inauthentic activity until it finally received pages containing the result it wanted: controversial content next to X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts.

That lawsuit is still ongoing but Media Matters has already laid off a bunch of staffers last year because of the cost of defending themselves in the lawsuit.

Last week it was reported that the FTC is now also investigating Media Matters for allegedly colluding with advertisers.

The regulator said in a letter sent to the organization that it was investigating the group, which is aligned with Democrats, over whether it illegally colluded with advertisers, according to the people. The letter, a copy of which was seen by The New York Times, required the organization to share copies of its budgets, documents showing the effects of “harmful” online content on advertisers, and communications with other watchdog groups…

As part of its demands, the F.T.C. also asked Media Matters to turn over all the documents it had produced or received from X in that litigation.

The investigation is the latest example of the Trump administration’s taking actions against individuals and organizations that play critical roles in the infrastructure of the political left.

Today, it appears the FTC investigation has expanded to as many as a dozen other groups that target advertisers.

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, three people familiar with the inquiries said…

Vanessa Otero, the chief executive of Ad Fontes Media, a media watchdog group, said the organization received a letter from the F.T.C. on May 20 demanding information about its business in relation to an investigation about “possible collusion.” Nearly a dozen other organizations also received such letters, two people familiar with the matter said.

The Times’ article doesn’t identify all of the other groups under investigation and the FTC is not commenting. So for now we only know about two groups, Media Matters and Ad Fontes Media. Given how long the legal case against MMFA has dragged out so far, it’s probably going to be a while before we see any of these investigations resolved.