The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has opened an investigation against Media Matters, a Washington, D.C.-based liberal advocacy group, over possible coordination with other media watchdogs accused by Elon Musk of helping orchestrate advertiser boycotts of X.
The FTC seeks all documents Media Matters has produced or received with other groups that assess misinformation and hate speech in news and social media, including a World Federation of Advertisers initiative called Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). The government is trying to confirm whether these groups have helped advertisers coordinate to pull advertising dollars from X after Musk bought the social network in November 2022.
X initially filed a lawsuit against the World Federation of Advertisers and major brands like CVS, Mars, Ørsted and Twitch in a Texas federal court in 2024. Musk accused them of orchestrating a coordinated advertising boycott that hurt the platform’s revenue, violating antitrust laws. In February this year, the social network expanded the lawsuit to include additional major brands such as Nestlé, Abbott Laboratories, Colgate-Palmolive, Lego, Pinterest, Tyson Foods and Shell International.
The amended version of the lawsuit alleges that at least 18 advertisers that were part of GARM stopped buying ads on X – either in the U.S. or globally – in the weeks after Musk bought the platform, while other GARM members “substantially reduced” their ad spend. According to Musk, GARM pressured X to adopt certain brand safety standards favoured by the group and, when it failed to meet their expectations, withdrew its ad investment.
X had also already sued Media Matters in 2023, accusing the organization of defaming it in an article that said ads for major brands had appeared alongside publications promoting far-right extremist content.
GARM has asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that advertisers chose other platforms based on their concerns about X’s commitment to brand safety. Meanwhile, Media Matters president Angelo Carusone said in statement: “The Trump administration has been defined by naming right-wing media figures to key posts and abusing the power of the federal government to bully political opponents and silence critics…It’s clear that’s exactly what’s happening here, given Media Matters’ history of holding those same figures to account. These threats won’t work; we remain steadfast to our mission.”
According to a recent study by research firm Emarketer, ad spending on X is forecast to increase in 2025 for the first time since Musk bought it, but is still below its pre-Musk acquisition level.
