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Who’s old enough to remember when we were told “online censorship” was just some weird part of our imagination?
Meanwhile, sites were getting demonetized, ad dollars were drying up faster than a puddle in the Mojave, and perfectly legal, common-sense viewpoints were getting shoved to the bottom of the digital pile, all while the people doing it hid behind slick little marketing phrases like “brand safety” and “misinformation.” That is the left’s favorite dirty trick. They take censorship and political discrimination, dress it up in corporate feel-good language, and pretend it is all on the up and up. Then they use power and money as weapons to starve unfavorable voices and push them out of the public square.
That’s what we were told was just a silly figment of our imaginations…
But it was very real, and now the Federal Trade Commission is finally stepping in and calling it out.
A huge part of the left’s censorship machine was financial. If they couldn’t silence you outright, they could make sure advertisers were too scared to touch you. That’s how they distorted the market, manipulated speech, and stacked the deck against America First outlets and conservative voices for years. So yes, what’s now happening is a really big deal.
READ MORE: Another Midwestern family erased from existence, thanks to a third-world immigrant…
The FTC is saying the biggest ad agencies weren’t acting independently when they silenced voices. They were colluding, through shared “brand safety” rules, to squeeze speech and viewpoints they didn’t like.
The Federal Trade Commission, along with a coalition of states, took decisive action today to stop collusion between the nation’s largest advertising agencies that distorted America’s modern public square.
Starting in 2018, major U.S. advertising agencies WPP, Publicis and Dentsu—who buy digital ad inventory on behalf of advertisers—unlawfully colluded to impose common “brand safety” standards across the digital advertising industry, according to the FTC’s complaint. The ad agencies, together with their primary competitors Omnicom and IPG, operated through trade associations to establish a common “Brand Safety Floor” to target “misinformation.”
The complaint alleges firms like NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index used this misinformation designation as a means to promote the demonetization of disfavored political viewpoints. In a competitive market, ad agencies compete for advertisers’ business by offering brand-safety tools that provide the best quality at the lowest cost. The brand safety agreement displaced competition by insulating the ad agencies from these competitive conditions, according to the complaint.
That government is now saying a “cartel” helped rig the ad market to punish conservative speech and viewpoints the Biden regime didn’t want funded.
This was about controlling the marketplace of ideas by making conservative viewpoints financially toxic.
FTV.gov:
“To resolve the FTC’s charges, the ad agencies have agreed to a proposed order that will stop the alleged coordinated conduct and prevent similar conduct from occurring in the future.
“The ad agencies’ brand-safety conspiracy turned competition in the market for ad-buying services on its head,” said Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson. “The antitrust laws guarantee participation in a market free from conduct, such as economic boycotts, that distort the fundamental competitive pressures that promote lower prices, higher quality products and increased innovation.
“As we explain in our complaint, the brand-safety agreement limited competition in the market for ad-buying services and deprived advertisers of the benefits of differentiated brand-safety standards that could be tailored to their unique advertising inventory,” he continued. “This unlawful collusion not only damaged our marketplace, but also distorted the marketplace of ideas by discriminating against speech and ideas that fell below the unlawfully agreed-upon floor. The proposed order remedies the dangers inherent to collusive practices and restores competition to the digital news ecosystem.”
These ad agencies didn’t need some giant neon sign saying “hey, let’s blacklist conservatives.” They carefully and quietly worked through trade groups that put a “corporate mask” on political censorship.
FTC.gov:
As the complaint alleges, the ad agencies operated through their trade associations—specifically, the World Federation of Advertisers’ Global Alliance for Responsible Media (“GARM”) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ Advertiser Protection Bureau (“APB”)—to establish their common brand-safety standards. Under the agencies’ brand-safety agreement, websites that included so-called “misinformation” were deemed to fall below the brand safety floor and thus risked becoming categorically ineligible for advertising revenue.
If approved by a federal judge, the order will ensure that each of the biggest U.S. advertising agencies are prevented from engaging in agreements that would set common brand safety standards or restrict advertising based on biased and politically motivated criteria.
Omnicom and IPG are subject to a similar FTC order.
And as we all knew, “misinformation” was the magic word they used to make ideological punishment sound respectable and normal.
Andrew Ferguson’s role is so important in all of this. For starters, he isn’t dancing around the issue. He’s saying the political angle is what mattered most.
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew Ferguson announced a settlement that bars major advertising firms from colluding to boycott platforms based on disfavored political viewpoints.
“The ad agencies’ brand-safety conspiracy turned competition in the market for ad-buying services on its head,” Ferguson said in a written statement. “The antitrust laws guarantee participation in a market free from conduct, such as economic boycotts, that distort the fundamental competitive pressures that promote lower prices, higher quality products and increased innovation.”
“As we explain in our complaint, the brand-safety agreement limited competition in the market for ad-buying services and deprived advertisers of the benefits of differentiated brand-safety standards that could be tailored to their unique advertising inventory,” he continued. “This unlawful collusion not only damaged our marketplace, but also distorted the marketplace of ideas by discriminating against speech and ideas that fell below the unlawfully agreed-upon floor. The proposed order remedies the dangers inherent to collusive practices and restores competition to the digital news ecosystem.”
We’ve been waiting for this moment. The government is formally acknowledging that political viewpoints were targeted.
Nobody who was unleashing this censorship was some footloose and fancy-free neutral type just trying to keep the internet clean. These were full-blown activists with money and power trying to destroy outlets they despised.
Breitbart:
Ferguson noted that GARM once described the right to free speech as “an extreme global interpretation of the U.S. Constitution” and “‘principles of governance’ … from 230 years ago (made by white men exclusively).”
John Montgomery, the then-executive vice president of Global Brand Safety, wrote to Rob Rakowitz, the leader of GARM:
There is an interesting parallel here with Breitbart. Before Breitbart crossed the line and started spouting blatant misinformation, we had long discussions about whether we should include them on our exclusion lists. As much as we hated their ideology and bullshit, we couldn’t really justify blocking them for misguided opinion. We watched them very carefully and it didn’t take long for them to cross the line. [Emphasis added]
Ferguson added that GARM aimed to “destroy publishers of content which they disapproved.”
They hated the ideology, then went looking for the excuse to crush it to dust.
The censorship cartel didn’t just starve outlets and creators of ad revenue. It helped create this really dangerous climate of political punishment that so many people have been yelling about for years.
This is a huge victory against the same censorship cartel that came after me. It started with ad boycotts and it turned into a knock on the door from the FBI and federal prosecutions over a meme.
Great that we have a leader like Andrew Ferguson at the FTC.
This is a huge victory against the same censorship cartel that came after me. It started with ad boycotts and it turned into a knock on the door from the FBI and federal prosecutions over a meme.
Great that we have a leader like Andrew Ferguson at the FTC. https://t.co/ylATZdMnRN
— Douglass Mackey (@douglassmackey) April 15, 2026
One thing is for sure: these types never stop at one lever of power. They use every lever they can get their grubby hands on.
This is our vindication. It was not our imagination. Conservative voices were targeted and punished for refusing to fall in line with the regime. And now the FTC is blowing up one of the dirtiest tricks in the censorship playbook.
READ MORE: There’s one HUGE problem with ‘Atkinson’ files that just skewered impeachment plot…
Andrew Ferguson deserves real credit for going after it. Because once the money weapon gets exposed, the whole fake “brand safety” scam starts to fall apart.
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