Stop letting right wing influencers cosplay as ‘independent’ media
+ Inside a Russian influence operation, a 'Who TF Did I Marry' TV show, TikTok's alien invasion, and why Gen Zs love choking each other out
We need to know who is funding the creator economy
Yesterday, a federal indictment revealed that a Tennessee media company working with right-wing influencers including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Lauren Southern, was receiving significant funding from the Russian state-sponsored network RT to push Russian disinformation.
The indictment is absolutely wild and WIRED has a great rundown on the details, including how the propaganda efforts worked. The case serves as the latest high profile example of how “independent media” on the right is anything but independent, and underscores the need for more transparency around funding models in the creator economy. It also shows how disinformation efforts have increasingly focused on penetrating U.S. media through content creators, and how lucrative being a pawn in these schemes can be.
While right wing content creators position themselves as scrappy upstarts, leaning into anti-establishment and populist brand positioning, they frequently accept money from far right interest groups, extremist billionaires, and even foreign actors.
Tenet Media received nearly $10 million, distributed out across a network of YouTubers and podcasters. As part of the disinformation campaign, Tenet Media influencers published hundreds of videos on social media that promoted Kremlin talking points. The videos were shared across platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok, reaching tens of millions of viewers.
Right wing creators are often propped up financially because they defend the interests of the rich and powerful. While they cosplay as bold truth tellers, these influencers can receive millions of dollars to produce content that aligns with certain political agendas.
According to the DOJ, Benny Johnson, Tim Pool and Dave Rubin were getting paid $400,00 a month, at least $100,000 per YouTube video, by RT. Johnson even allegedly negotiated a $100,000 signing bonus. The median annual salary for a journalist, meanwhile, is $57,500, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"I just think it's funny (!) that if you are 10 degrees left of center, never mind actually on the left, you have to pester your readers for $5 every second of your life or you'll die," the journalist Luke O'Neill posted shortly after the news broke. "But, if you are a negative charisma Hitler 2, they back a cash dump truck up to your mansion every day."
As I wrote in my book, Extremely Online, this massive disparity in funding when it comes to content creators on the right vs left, is deliberate.
The far right recognized the opportunities in personality-driven media decades ago. After boosting talk radio stars in the 80s and 90s, when social media proliferated, they began to invest heavily in news influencers who seamlessly blend entertainment, news commentary, and far right political messaging into YouTube videos, Instagram memes, podcasts and more.
Renee DiResta, a researcher and author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, said that "buying authentic influencers is a far better use of funds than creating fake personas, because they bring their own trusting audiences and are actually, you know, real."
Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire has been heavily funded by wealthy Republican donors, including the Wilks brothers, Texas-based billionaires known for their oil and fracking fortune. Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, has benefited from significant funding from conservative mega donors including the Koch network.
When right wing creators began getting deplatformed more frequently on mainstream social media apps in the second half of the 2010s, an entire ecosystem of alternative platforms aimed at helping extremist influencers monetize and amass audiences, cropped up.
Rumble, a video sharing platform similar to YouTube backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, began paying far right influencers and anti vaxx content creators hundreds of thousands of dollars to create content on its platform in 2021. Locals, a newsletter platform owned by Rumble, allows influencers to monetize through newsletters in a similar way to Substack. DLive, a right wing Twitch competitor, allowed influencers storming the Capitol building on January 6th, to make thousands of dollars off their live streams. Kick and Cozy.tv, two other right wing live streaming platforms, permit nearly any far right extremist the ability to create content and start earning money. And X, under Musk, has paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to right wing influencer accounts.
The robust financial backing the right wing content creator ecosystem enjoys, allows extremists the ability to fund professional production teams, social media ad buys, and marketing initiatives that give them a competitive advantage online. In contrast, progressive creators are left to rely on meager donations and crowdfunding efforts to sustain their work.
This financial imbalance has made it nearly impossible for left-wing content creators to match the reach or production quality of their right-wing counterparts.
Already, several Russia-backed Tenet Media influencers, including Benny Johnson and Tim Pool, have been doing damage control. They've publicly stated that they had no idea about the origins of the money and claimed that they were merely unwitting victims who were misled by the company.
But while they may not have known the specific details of where the money came from, it's worth asking why none of them ever questioned why any entity would want to pay them $100,000 per video, an obscene rate that's not even close to industry standard.
As creator-driven media becomes the dominant way people consume news and information, this lack of transparency around funding poses a significant threat to media integrity. Unlike traditional outlets, where business models are more regulated and visible, the creator economy is deeply opaque, leaving audiences vulnerable to manipulation by hidden interests.
Nothing dismantles the narratives pushed by these grifters cosplaying as “independent media” faster than exposing where they’re actually getting their money from, but It's crucial that we seek more transparency from influencers and influence-driven media companies across the political spectrum.
Without full knowledge of who is financing the creators we follow, watch, and read, how will any of us know whether the content we're consuming is shaped by dangerous hidden agendas or foreign interference?
What I’m reading
How to Make Millions as a Professional Whistleblower
A little-known provision in US law permits anyone to blow the whistle on financial fraud—and potentially take home a percentage of the funds collected. One undercover sleuth has made a wild career out of it. - GQ
Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art
To create a novel or a painting, an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial intelligence. - New Yorker
Is Shanin Blake, the ‘Alien Conspiracist E-Girl,’ for Real?
She's amassed a sizable following on TikTok by being "the Burning Man final boss" — but she says her story is much more complicated. - Rolling Stone
‘Right to Repair for Your Body’: The Rise of DIY, Pirated Medicine
Four Thieves Vinegar Collective has made DIY medicine cheaper and more accessible to the masses. - 404 Media
Does A.I. Really Encourage Cheating in Schools?
New technologies are raising suspicions about students’ work, but the controversy—like so many others swirling around American classrooms—misses the point of what we want our kids to learn. - New Yorker
The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case
The legal battle was spurred by book publishers objecting to the archive’s digital lending library. - WIRED
Viral TikTok Series ‘Who TF Did I Marry?’ Gets TV Adaptation
Writer and actress Natasha Rothwell is developing a TV adaptation of “Who TF Did I Marry?,” a TikTok series by Tareasa “Reesa Teesa” Johnson that went mega viral earlier this year. - Variety
To speak to a representative, press $$
The hot new status symbol in customer service: a phone call with an actual human. - Business Insider
Dating apps develop AI ‘wingmen’ to generate better chat-up lines
Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and Grindr are racing to create chatbots that can coach Gen Z users to flirt. - Financial Times
More fun stuff
Target customers are swapping lids on Owala bottles — and it's causing chaos.
Andrew Tate got ratiod to oblivion.
The Hawk Tuah Girl is launching her own podcast under Jake Paul’s media company. I loved Garbage Day’s Ryan Broderick on the “fringes of online gutter culture.”
The winners of the Michigan Secretary of State’s “I Voted” sticker contest were revealed after a public vote, and some of them are adorable.
The Harris campaign's official @kamalahq TikTok just posted a video of Trump talking about abortion next to a Subway Surfers playthrough.
This Apple Vision Pro app makes ghosts appear in your house. It's called Hauntify and scans your rooms in real-time to find the perfect spots to scare you.
A Minecraft movie is coming to theaters next year.
Mailing mercury is NOT brat, in case you were wondering.
Instagram is adding the ability to leave comments on Instagram Stories. (I hate it!)
Thousands of TikTokers pretended to be aliens in an alien-themed livestream hosted by @purple_alien_lover this week. Guests changed their profile pictures to match a green alien aesthetic and made alien noises (gleep gloop). The live was shared over 30,000 times and lasted for hours. h/t Silence Brand
Soon, all of the blogs on Tumblr will be hosted on WordPress. End of an era :(
If you’re looking for an in depth Wojak universe explained Lifehacker has got you covered.
The Guardian examines why young people are so into choking.
What do you want to see more of from this newsletter? Let me know!
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I find this post to be hypocritical. Especially considering you recently posted about content creators being valuable assests to the public at large, as it helps combat 'bias' and influence of legacy journalism. But when a content creator is 'right wing' people automatically label them as state run media.
It's a concern to me, that as so called independent journalism, anyone that platforms information not flattering or aligned with power is immediately labeled by power as a threat in some way.
Wake up. Anything the FBI. CIA, NSA, CISA, the justice department, etc. serve to or extend to journalists and content creators alike is from the state. It's the same thing state run media. Why do you think content creators and media were invited. It's not to be grilled and suffer an inquisition. It's to be used.
As a former teacher of journalism, the goal of it was not, nor ever has been, objectivity.
The goal of an independent press was to be adversarial.
If you think the algorithms of content platforms are going to promote information adversarial to the powerful, then good luck helping the public find truth.
When you realize that both content creators and legacy journalism are owned by the powerful, and realize we as American idiots, grew to believe "access" to power is equal to "asking" power difficult and challenging questions, then we can see why anyone was on the invite list.
If I'm the National committee chairs, I'm inviting content creators to share my narrow, carefully crafted messaging with the masses. Because, when you groom language through algorithms that are designed to label and tag then flash to specific audiences while simultaneously filtering contradicting information as evil state run media, you want content creators, the new legacy media, and the legacy media to share your truth. You become cheerleaders of truth.
One the powerful want us to see.
Please, anyone that reads this, don't be so naive as to think the DNC/RNC were noble in inviting content creators. Don't be so blindly passionate about your party that what the journalists catch and serve to you as reality to believe it is. Adversarial information is not undemocratic. Neither is sharing information, nor should it ever be.
Ask your favorite journalists and creators to be adversarial in their involvement with power, as I ask you Miss Lorenz. As you have access to powerful, you have to ask questions you don't like amd don't believe in, questions others can't ask, questions you think are a waste of time becuase you think there's no truth to them. You have to want them to fear your writing but need your followers. How else can we hold the powerful accountable?
Communism and social anarchism gets zero corporate money for some weird reason. I am struggling to build a viewership organically and I am asking for money more than ever and getting less than I got when I never asked. It’s very frustrating.