The new dark money: How influencers get paid big bucks to court your vote

Political campaigns and their surrogates are pouring millions of dollars into social media influencers with scant regulatory oversight or public transparency, as they embrace a marketing tactic that has revolutionized the U.S. economy.

Online influencers who usually traffic in makeup, crocheting or parenting are earning thousands of dollars for a single TikTok or Instagram post on behalf of groups backing Vice President Kamala Harris or former president Donald Trump. Creators flooded both parties’ conventions this summer, posting selfies with speakers, recording videos backstage and attending parties catering to social media.

Political groups that use other forms of advertising are required to disclose their affiliations - think of the politician who intones “I approve of this message” at the end of a TV spot. But freelance online creators are under no such obligation for political posts, even though federal regulations demand they say so when promoting a commercial product.

“If an influencer is paid to endorse a brand of toothpaste, that has to be disclosed,” said Ellen L. Weintraub, one of three Democrats on the six-member Federal Election Commission. “We ought to have the same rules for influencers who want to endorse a candidate.”

Critics say the lack of transparency in the hottest new sector of political advertising could be abused by political groups to manipulate public opinion, and that federal election rules have failed to keep pace with the ways social media has transformed campaigning.

Last year, the Federal Election Commission considered mandating greater transparency about the political funds being channeled to online creators. Weintraub was not alone in her displeasure when the FEC decided to stand down on the matter after pressure from across the political spectrum.

The Brennan Center for Justice and other liberal nonprofits called on the agency to adopt new disclosure requirements after campaigns started using online creators in the 2020 and 2022 midterm races. “Voters deserve to know who is seeking to influence them,” wrote the Brennan Center in a comment to the FEC last year.

Conservative and libertarian groups, including Citizen United, which won the landmark 2010 Supreme Court ruling that the First Amendment forbids limits on “independent political spending” by corporations and other groups, had a different take. They argued that new restrictions on influencers could limit their right to free speech online.

Sean Cooksey, the FEC’s Republican chair, says regulating influencer speech is impractical and could result in burdensome agency micromanaging of political campaigns.

“Political speech is entitled to a higher level of protection under the First Amendment than commercial speech,” he said in an interview. “I 100 percent reject the characterization that keeping pace with technology means regulating technology more.”

Ultimately, the FEC decided that campaigns do need to disclose when they pay social media companies to promote an influencer’s post to a broader audience. But there is no federal requirement for influencers to disclose whether their video or meme was originally paid for by a politician or super PAC.

In the current campaign cycle, political ad brokers’ instructions to influencers have often been targeted and direct. Four days after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, the liberal super PAC Priorities USA hosted an urgent briefing with its roster of online personalities, instructing them on ways to craft memes and videos to help their followers get to know - and promote - Harris.

Some influencers said they disclosed paid posts by mentioning the PAC or political group in a hashtag, even though such groups rarely direct them to do so. Often they work through an intermediary agency and have no direct contact with the PAC or political organization.

Michael Mezzatesta, a 33-year-old influencer who posts frequently about the climate to his 181,000 Instagram followers - including in favor of Harris’s policies - said he sometimes discloses when he is being paid by a political group, but not always.

“To me it depends on: How much is this something I would just be doing myself without any incentive?” said the Los Angeles-based creator, who quit his job in tech in April because he was making enough income from his social media accounts. Mezzatesta, who uses the handle michael_mezz online, says he views the political posts as different from his content on behalf of banks and other products, because rather than selling anything, he’s trying to get his followers to care about a political cause he supports.

“People can be misled … but that’s only true if creators are saying things if they don’t actually believe,” said Mezzatesta, who estimates 10 to 20 percent of his revenue comes from political posts.

People First, a firm that has worked on campaigns on behalf of Planned Parenthood and Latino Victory, has brokered thousands of pieces of political content this year, and its creators have posted disclosures on about 97 percent of the posts, said Ryan Davis, the agency’s co-founder and chief operating officer.

The one exception is TikTok, Davis said, which has had a strict ban on political advertising since 2019. As a result, influencers are discouraged from disclosing when a post is paid for by a political group, giving PACs a convenient out. TikTok says it will potentially suspend or ban the accounts of creators who do not follow its rules, which prohibit paid posts referring to an election, including calling people to register to vote.

In the absence of federal action, some states are beginning to act. The Texas Ethics Commission this year unanimously voted to require influencers to disclose when they are paid to make political posts.

It is hard to track exactly how much campaigns and super PACs are spending on creators because they often distribute funds to large agencies that work with the creators, or they funnel payment through subcontracts that are not visible in federal election filings.

Since March 2023, according to a Washington Post analysis of public campaign expenditures, the Democratic National Committee and Harris campaign have paid nearly $4 million to Village Marketing Agency, which says it has also developed influencer marketing campaigns for Netflix, SoulCycle and Anheuser-Busch.

The Harris campaign also paid more than $500,000 to the social media firms Good Influence and People First Marketing, as of September. The creators interviewed by The Post said they had not received payments from the Harris campaign or Democratic National Committee, but some did receive payments from PACs and social welfare organizations affiliated with liberal causes. Some said they spent thousands of dollars of their own money to attend the convention because they saw it as an opportunity to expand their followings, make business connections and participate in a historic moment.

The Trump campaign has been leveraging an established ecosystem of conservative influencers - such as Benny Johnson, Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro, who have long promoted Republican candidates and policies online. The Trump campaign does not directly pay influencers for content, said a person familiar with strategy, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss the campaign. It does provide access to rallies and gives creators swag like hats.

The campaign is also seeking to work with influencers whose reach may extend beyond traditional conservative audiences, the person said. Trump has been courting influencers who are popular with young men, recording a TikTok with the famous YouTuber Logan Paul and appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

Creators are willing to engage with the Trump campaign in a way they weren’t in 2020, the person said. “The resistance that was once there is no longer,” the person said.

Republican digital strategist Eric Wilson said “The real work is happening” in outreach to mainstream content creators. Firms working with Republicans are experimenting with a “cost per action model,” in which influencers are paid not for specific posts, Wilson said, but instead based on how many people they get to register to vote or sign a petition.

“It’s very much the Wild West,” he said.

For five years, Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump youth group founded by Kirk, has run an online influencer program. Turning Point USA’s PAC has raised more than $3 million since 2023, according to federal election disclosures. The group’s website says it has partnered with hundreds of creators. Turning Point USA did not respond to requests for comment.

Separately, according to an analysis of campaign finance filings, the National Republican Congressional Committee has spent nearly $500,000 on work with Creator Grid Inc., whose website says it “connects Republican candidates with the internet’s most powerful conservative influencers.”

Firms working on influencer campaigns in politics view it as the next frontier in political campaigning. Email defined the 2008 election, social media was embraced widely in 2012, and campaigns sought to leverage SMS text messages in 2016, said Josh Cook, the president of Good Influence. Now influencers on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram are defining 2024.

“We see it as a natural progression of where attention is,” said Cook, who served as President Barack Obama’s Pennsylvania digital director in 2012. “For the dollars to follow, that makes sense.”

Cook declined to comment on specific clients, but the firm works with YouTubers who talk about the news and TikTok accounts focused on the LGBTQ community as well as on teachers and parents.

Payments for influencers can range widely based on the campaign, the size of their following and the engagement they receive on their posts.

People First has paid anywhere from $200 for what is known as a micro-influencer to up to about $100,000 for influencers with millions of followers for political posts this year, Davis said, adding: “It’s harder to get people to talk about politics, so sometimes there’s even a premium on that.”

Danielle Butterfield, the executive director of Priorities USA, said she expects to pay between $5,000 and $15,000 for a single post, and sometimes more. Priorities USA has worked on campaigns with liberal groups including the environmental advocacy group League of Conservation Voters and Somos Votantes, which hired YouTube creators to create videos in Spanish and English to reach Latino voters.

“We let the creator decide what they want to share” regarding payment, Butterfield said, adding that Priorities USA is “often in the dark” and would welcome more guidance from regulators.

As campaigns and groups engage more with influencers, disinformation researchers are concerned that they can spread misinformation by skirting the already fuzzy limits that social media platforms put on political content. Campaigns and political groups are increasingly working with micro-influencers and even nano-influencers, who target their messages to very specific geographic and demographic groups. That can make it more difficult to track or debunk falsehoods.

The risk of influencers spreading propaganda was underscored earlier this year when the Justice Department alleged that Russia had funneled $10 million into Tenet Media, which then hired popular conservative influencers in the United States.

Samuel C. Woolley, the chair of disinformation studies at the University of Pittsburgh, said neither campaigns nor social media platforms are likely to crack down on coordinated political messages because they benefit their bottom lines.

“Because elections these days are won by such small margins, due to the vote in such specific states, cities and counties, influencers are seen as this core conduit to those spaces and places,” he said.

Kory Aversa, a Philadelphia-based publicist who posts about local events and restaurants to his nearly 100,000 Instagram followers, said he has been asked to do about 30 paid political posts this year, but he has only done two or three, all disclosed.

He said creators have a responsibility to be ethical about political work because their reputation and authenticity with their followers is on the line.

“It’s up to us to give shape to our own industry,” he said.

There is little doubt, though, that money will shape it, too.

© 2024 , The Washington Post