Lol. No not by secretly funding people whose content you have veto power over because then anyone who agrees with you can be plausibly be accused of being a paid sock puppet and no denial can work because these NDAs mean none of them could disclose it. This poisons the well!
For real. Do they think someone was wordsmithing Charlie Kirk’s slide deck, the reason he and those other goons work is because they came to that ghoulish messaging naturally.
Literally doing this openly would be ten thousand times better than creating the Democratic Party's Wu Mao Dang
"hi, I'm X, with Chorus." Solves the problem.
Sounds like pretty bad advice to me tbh
I dunno I prefer to know whether content is being made by a creator on their own accord or whether someone is paying them. I might be committing pundit's fallacy, but I assume most people feel the same, and would be mad if they found out they were misled.
i think if we took a sample of applicable influencers, randomly assigned half of them to say "hi, I'm here with the Democrats" then do their normal job and half to just do their normal job, the latter would have several orders of magnitude more audience and reach in a very short timeframe
Sure. The problem is that it's not really possible to keep a program like this top secret -- opsec not immaculate -- and press about the nature of the program casts a bad look on the whole program and those involved. That's why it is better to be honest, and in line with FEC rules, to begin with
This embarrassing article -- and the way it makes this entire effort look bad -- could have been entirely avoided by honesty and transparency to begin with. Influencers should in fact be honest about when they are doing paid ads. Paid media is good -- provided its done right.
Doing things the wrong way hurts us on any reasonable timescale, even if its tempting. Its totally predictable that the nature of the program would be talked about publicly and that people would react as they are reacting. Those who came up with this should plan for that strategically going forward
This is also definitely wrong. I am so glad people are actually out there doing things and trying things instead of being unwilling to risk getting yelled at on Bluesky.
This is also not definitely wrong because this is a description of what has happened. Its not plausible to expect that you can run a large operation like this -- paying large numbers of individual influencers large ongoing sums -- and keep the entire thing hush-hush. Given that, good to think ahead
Dude I live in a red state and volunteer for my local Ds including doing canvassing, calls, etc. I think its good for people to be politically involved. I think its important that we be honest about who we are with and abide by FEC rules. Trying to trick people is not a good idea.
I volunteered the whole last month of the Zohran campaign as a materials distribution node that helped increase throughput of volunteers in the neighborhood. Id been volunteering on and off for 16 years and never saw the like . That's innovation. These are paid sock puppets.
Idk I think the good thing is most of the people who view progressive media investment as bad are idiots on Bluesky who no one cares about so it doesn't really matter if people find out so long as people have time to build trust with their audiences in the meantime
This happened in *months*
And I guess let's see what happens to these influencers' audiences! One of the many reasons this is fine is that most people who aren't lunatics agree that it's okay to pay people for their work
And what happens when this shit inevitably leaks, like it just did?
I don't know, how many followers did Rogan and Kirk and Shapiro lose over their political ties that took decades for anyone to notice or care about, my sense is they're doing fine because they had time to build trust with their audiences
What. Kirk and Shapiro are known political actors that work for political advocacy outfits. Always have been. It's not a secret who their employers are. We don't need to be ashamed of funding advocates either. In fact, self-conscious embarrassment IS self-defeating
You missed literally the first decade of their careers. Speaks to my point.
There is a cumulative effect on the electorate. They are badgered, exhausted and distrustful. I did door to door canvass in 2012 and they hated us *then* even before we made every text we sent them a hyperventilating lie.
Thank you!!! Yes!!! Cumulative effects are key to thinking about this in any kind of useful way. None of these are like one-and-done -- all ongoing, interventions, methods of engaging with public -- that adversaries will respond to. We need to think about how our plans play out over time to succeed