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A dark money group is funding high-profile Democratic influencers
- spacebanana7 1y ago> "Creators in the program are not allowed to use any funds or resources that they receive as part of the program to make content that supports or opposes any political candidate or campaign without express authorization from Chorus in advance and in writing, per the contract." This type of propaganda may well be counterproductive. Lobotomising your sides' best influencers could ruin their appeal and risk having them create weird echo chambers.
- Jgoauh 1y agoat this point i'm not mad the democrats are doing propaganda i'm just offended at how shit they are at it. The republicans brainwashed half the country and overturned the constitution with 4 podcast bros and a dream and the democrats are busy trying to kick their most popular members out of the party.
- ZeroGravitas 1y agoRepublican "wingnut welfare" has funded many household names and internet famous cranks over decades so it's misleading to suggest it's only 4 podcasters and they did it without literal billions in funding.
- Jgoauh 1y agoyeah i know, but still their ratio of influence/crank/dollar is impressive, i was mostly referencing the effectiveness of their male gen-z oriented content.
- ses1984 1y agoAre we forgetting fox news, rush limbaugh...?
- Jgoauh 1y agoi don't think the ven diagram between people who watch tiktoks and rush limbaugh has much overlap. I think the republicans strategy towards social media platforms is extremely effective (sadly)
- nonethewiser 1y agoOr maybe a consolidated media industry is just not representative of what people actually believe.
- Jgoauh 1y agowell i believe media definitle affects what people believe, of course it only works to a limit, but i don't think a single person should own multiple media outlets. You gotta choose, you get 1 thing, that's it
- slipperydippery 1y agoWe used to limit local market monopolization and total reach of, at least, public airwaves broadcasters. That was a good idea. But we stopped.
- nonethewiser 1y agoSeems to be working itself out. Mainstream, traditional, legacy, or whatever you want to call it, is losing their audience.
- Cyberdog 1y agoYes, given that Limbaugh has not produced new content in four years due to his death, there would be no overlap nowadays.
- Ekaros 1y agoI never understood how they think they can win anyone over by antagonising them. Especially those who are not rich and affluent enough to be okay who ever wins...
- Jgoauh 1y agoi know ! its so stupid, all they have to do is ask people what they want and give it to them, but they can't piss of billionaires so they're stuck with 'its not our fault' and 'minorities can hang as long as they work' The republicans only ask billionaires what they want, politics are so much easier when your entire party is focused on the interests of like 1000 guys
- jmclnx 1y agoNeed to keep the donations from the top 1% flowing. What is needed is a repeal of Citizens United. Plus if your income is above sat 150,000 USD you can at most donate say 10000 per year to all political candidates, PACs and anything related to influencing political activities. Or better yet, all these donations must be fully published with the name of the people or all companies related to the company donating. No dark money at all. The published list must be in plain language and downloadable as a plain Text File.
- Jgoauh 1y agoIn many countries an individual cannot donate more than about 10k dollars per year, and companies can't donate anything.
- slipperydippery 1y agoThe current far-right effort started with the postwar "think tank" boom, and that crowd has been working (successfully) to bend policy and law so they can enable and guide the creation of massive right-wing propaganda networks since the 70s. Fox News, Sinclair Media, a handful of dominant AM radio and now podcast production & distribution networks, and so on. This isn't recent; we've been heading this way for decades, and not by accident.
- Jgoauh 1y agoabsolutly but i think a big percentage of the young Rep votes have been entirely endoctrinated by a handfull of social media voices who would have hated the traditionnal rep propaganda. I wonder how american politics would look today without the 3 idiots and their friends
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- mindslight 1y agoThey answer is that they're both funded by and held hostage by entrenched corporate interests. The Democrats in safe blue states are allowed to say and propose whatever lofty reforms they'd like (more fuel for the fire), but when it comes time to vote on a bill, the "moderates" in purple states fall in line to kill it and/or add enough loopholes and pork that the reforms end up pretty hollow. They're also fully supported when they ham up the identity politics and other divisive topics that encourage the plebs to fight one another. The voting public gets tired of the squabbling and seeing the constructive type of reform fail, and switches its attention to the other professional party. The "reforms" then put forth by Republicans are all about getting rid of restrictions on corporate interests, appealing to a fallacy that restrictions on corpos are akin to restrictions on individuals (from the same vein as Steinbeck's "temporarily embarrassed millionaires"). When the Republicans get the green light, it's then full speed ahead for sidelining the US government in favor of unaccountable corporate power - as we've seen demonstrated in stark relief with Trump. People will then slowly realize they've been had, and support for Democrats will grow. But any attempt to rebuild what got destroyed then fails (the original dynamic), and the cycle repeats.
- _DeadFred_ 1y agoDon't forget Tennent media and secret Russian funding for conservative bloggers.
- thisisnotauser 1y agoThis seems like yet another a hilariously disastrous misstep on the part of the Democrats, dark money and restricted speech and red tape. Have they considered just, you know, talking to people on the internet? The way normal humans do? The way Trump has done with such wildly incredible success?
- zemvpferreira 1y agoPardon the spam but your comment reminded me of this post, which you might enjoy: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/i-told-you-so https://samkriss.substack.com/p/i-told-you-so
- pyronik19 1y ago[dead]
- estearum 1y agoTo suggest the right wing media ecosystem is "just talking to people on the Internet" is hilariously divorced from reality. https://apnews.com/article/russian-interference-presidential-election-influencers-trump-999435273dd39edf7468c6aa34fad5dd https://apnews.com/article/russian-interference-presidential...
- Ygg2 1y agoThat just seems like an influence campaign. I expect every country to try to meddle in each other's politics, for their own gain. Also Tim Pool? Rubin? Those are small fries. Putin couldn't afford Joe Rogan or Ben Shapiro?
- axus 1y agoDon't forget the Green party!
- estearum 1y agoRight... that's how influence campaigns work. They take root at low-level inputs and get laundered onto larger and more legitimate platforms. A brief visit to Twitter will show you the hordes of bots constantly farming outrage bait, which then gets picked up by the micro-influencers, which then gets picked up (with some FSB financial assistance) by Tim Pool, Rubin, and Benny Johnson, which then gets picked up by Rogan and Shapiro, which then gets picked up by the Department of Homeland Security's official press releases and finally encoded into next week's executive order. This is a description of a successful information op. (Edit: The other commenter is correct that this is also happening within the BLM and BLM-adjacent movements and the green party -- all the same dynamic, but only one has found a direct route to an especially mercurial president's ear)
- Lalabadie 1y agohttps://archive.is/vPCMz https://archive.is/vPCMz
- chiffre01 1y agoConsidering I've never heard of any of these people, and it says they have a combined audience of 13 million followers, things are looking bleak. Google says Joe Rogan alone has more than 14 million followers on Spotify and 16.4 million subscribers on YouTube all predominantly male (71-80 percent) as of March 2024
- monero-xmr 1y agoConsidering the shrill “DONATE NOW TO STOP TRUMP!!” emails were actually used to pay off campaign debt (after spending $1.5 billion!) I don’t think the Democrat base is primed for more shenanigans https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/us/politics/kamala-harris-dnc-fundraising.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/us/politics/kamala-harris...
- IAmBroom 1y agoI worry more that they're not primed to win. The party has no standout stars; Gov. Newsom is the closest we have, and half of his promotion comes from Trump attacking him. We have the most incompetent POTUS in history in office right now; he's so stupid he makes GW Bush look like a Rhodes Scholar. And yet, with all that surface area, and Trump at all-time low popularity... nothing exciting is heard from the Dems.
- blargthorwars 1y agoNot really a secret: Conservatives are proping up Newsom so when he makes it through the primary, a wet roll of toilet paper could win against him based on "Don't California America!" It can backfire. Democrats did it to talkshow-Trump, thinking he'd be easy to crush in the general against stateswoman-Hillary.
- mindslight 1y agoCan we please stop casually referring to the neofascist movement as "conservatives" ? That label stopped being appropriate with Trump, when the reactionary dumpster fire escaped talk radio and grew into a revanchist destructive movement that consumed the whole party. The label "conservative" is more appropriate for the Democratic party these days - for example why their opposition mostly consists of strongly worded letters, or why they keep sandbagging any of their members who proposes significant action or reform. They're still acting from a place of fundamental belief in our societal institutions, even as those institutions are being torn down.
- mindslight 1y ago
- jimmydoe 1y agoremind me of companies throwing money at marketing with no real product.
- washadjeffmad 1y agoThe purpose is the continued exposure and engagement with marketing, which becomes much less tolerable without constant familiarity and conditioning.
- nonethewiser 1y agoYou can change to appeal to voters or pay to try and change voters.
- tbrownaw 1y ago> Among other issues, it mandated extensive secrecy about disclosing their payments and had restrictions on what sort of political content the creators could produce. I think I heard about there being disclosure rules for people taking money to promote commercial things. Maybe that needs to apply to politics as well?
- IAmBroom 1y agoIt absolutely does need to happen, and never will. Subtle but effective oversight will not become a popular voting issue, and the majority of those in power will never ask to limit their own power (nor wealth).
- michaelt 1y ago> the majority of those in power will never ask to limit their own power Surprisingly, many politicians love campaign spending limits, much like tobacco companies quite like tobacco advertising bans. After all, unlimited spending means unlimited time spent begging wealthy donors for just one more $10k donation, so you can match your opponent who's outspending you. Whereas with a limit, of, say, $0.30 per voter? Both you and your opponent will reach the limit pretty quickly, allowing you both to get off the fundraising treadmill.
- ungreased0675 1y agoThat was my first thought as well. Paid endorsements should be explicit. “Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.”
- viridian 1y agoAt this point I think the Democratic party would rather cede every office in the country to the opposition rather than tear down their careerist, insider focused superstructure. If you are losing the chess game to adveraries who started playing the game mere months ago, you need to strip your play down to the bare fundamentals and start anew. What you've been doing isn't working against the softest possible opponents, it's time to pivot.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- oulipo2 1y agoI know one person in this group, and basically the article is 100% bullshit... they are quite open (have even public videos mentioning what they do, who they work for), the can talk about ANY subject (israel, US politics, even criticizing the very democrat party) etc
- josefritzishere 1y agoWe were all reading about Russian money funding conservative social media influencers about 2 months ago. A response seemed inevitable.
- Deuter8 1y ago[flagged]
- joshcsimmons 1y agoWhat an odd thing to say.
- cmxch 1y agoExplains places like Reddit in a nutshell.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]