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Is it illegal to not buy ads on X? Experts explain the FTC’s bizarre ad fight.
After a judge warned that the Federal Trade Commission's probe into Media Matters for America (MMFA) should alarm "all Americans"—viewing it as a likely government retaliation intended to silence critical reporting from a political foe—the FTC this week appealed a preliminary injunction blocking the investigation.
The Republican-led FTC's determined to keep pressure on the nonprofit—which is dedicated to monitoring conservative misinformation—ever since Elon Musk villainized MMFA in 2023 for reporting that ads were appearing next to pro-Nazi posts on X. Musk claims that reporting caused so many brands to halt advertising that X's revenue dropped by $1.5 billion, but advertisers have suggested there technically was no boycott. They've said that many factors influenced each of their independent decisions to leave X—including their concerns about Musk's own antisemitic post, which drew rebuke from the White House in 2023.
In the time since, the toxic content has started coming from within X, via backlash-inducing outputs from its chatbot Grok. For MMFA, advertisers, agencies, and critics, a big question remains: Can the FTC actually penalize advertisers for invoking their own rights to free expression and association by refusing to deal with a private company just because they happened to agree on a collective set of brand standards to avoid monetizing hate speech or offensive content online?
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