Trump Insiders Are Quietly Paying Teen Memers For Posts
Documents show that meme accounts rife with disinformation have also become shadowy advertising tools for some notable Republicans.
Little did they know, members of Donald Trump’s inner circle would soon come knocking.
Since the 2020 election, these meme moguls have quietly collected payments to run ads for the Trump campaign’s “Election Defense Fund”; former senior Trump aide Jason Miller’s new social media network, GETTR; Trump confidant Mike Lindell’s bedding company, MyPillow; and, as recently as a few weeks ago, the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
In a few cases, the memers have included high-schoolers as young as 14. Some of these discreet ad deals were brokered directly between teens and former members of the Trump White House, communications obtained by HuffPost reveal. . .
Most of the ads come in the form of memes with captions urging people to click customized links inserted into the memers’ Instagram bios, which lead to the promoted parties’ websites. The memers typically earn a small “conversion” fee for each person who uses their link, doled out by third-party marketing agencies working with big-name clients. Given the massive reach of several of these pages, often boosted by Instagram’s powerful recommendation algorithms, this can quickly add up. For the recent GETTR ad campaign, memers earned $0.85 per conversion with a cap of 25,000 conversions — or $21,250.
Not many kids can name-drop major political figures (or a world-infamous pillow tycoon) on their résumés before they’re old enough to vote. For some, their Instagram shitpost accounts — once casual side hustles they would use to shill crummy MAGA socks and the like for a few bucks here and there — are now serious income streams. . .
> The services they provide are highly valuable: They’ve fostered relationships with huge niche communities and can launch hushed influence campaigns that are free from the kind of oversight and transparency mandates enforced through regulated advertising channels. . .
Almost none of the dozens of meme ads that HuffPost has observed have been labeled as paid endorsements — a form of deceptive advertising known as “stealth shilling.” In certain cases, memers’ failure to disclose their compensation likely constitutes a violation of federal law for which they, the promoted parties and any intermediaries could be held liable.
But the evidence doesn’t exist for long: Unlike an official ad placed through Instagram’s business platform, which would be stored in an online database and subject to public scrutiny, the memers tend to delete sponsored posts from their pages after just 24 to 72 hours. This is especially problematic when it comes to ads of a political nature, as it allows advertisers to target voters with virtually untraceable messaging.
“A lot of this stuff is very down-low,” said a memer with hundreds of thousands of followers. Like others who spoke to HuffPost, he is a minor and requested anonymity. Some declined to speak on the record for fear of endangering their business relationships. . .Sondra Clark and Ory Rinat launched Urban Legend, an influencer marketing platform that has collaborated with young memers, in 2020.
Behind the scenes, young memers have done business directly with the former chief digital officer of Trump’s White House, Ory Rinat, according to emails and Instagram messages reviewed by HuffPost. Rinat left politics in June 2020 to launch Urban Legend, an influencer marketing platform, with the former marketing director of Trump’s executive office, Sondra Clark. Federal Election Commission filings show that over the next six months, Urban Legend’s partner firm, Legendary Campaigns, raked in close to $1.8 million from Trump’s reelection campaign for “online advertising,” as Axios first reported.
During this time, memers simultaneously unleashed a torrent of pre-election memes instructing their followers to visit the Trump campaign’s website and complete their voter registration — with at least one suggesting they do so to “make sure Democrats didn’t mess with it” — followed by dozens of post-election memes directing people to a campaign donation portal in support of Trump’s legal battle to overturn his loss. Urban Legend declined to comment on specific ad campaigns; it also declined to confirm that it had worked with the Trump campaign and other entities HuffPost inquired about.
“We can’t allow the Left-wing MOB to steal the Presidency,” one memer wrote in an ad promoting Trump’s “Election Defense Fund.” “Hit the LINK IN MY BIO and let’s fight these Commies in the Supreme Court.” (Those who donated may be surprised to learn that most of their money actually went into Trump’s “Save America” PAC, a slush fund he could dip into as he pleases for personal expenses, like golfing.). . .
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MADE IN ARIZONA: Jake Hoffman in Queen Creek and Turning Point's election troll farm
The Washington Post in September exposed Hoffman’s Rally Forge, a digital marketing firm that paid teenagers, some of them minors, to set up fake personas and blanket social media with thousands of nearly identical posts aimed at undermining confidence in the validity of election and downplaying the impact of COVID-19.
OPINION: House Speaker Rusty Bowers appoints a newly elected legislator who specializes in internet disinformation campaigns to the No. 2 post on the panel that oversees elections. Genius plan
Arizona's minister of disinformation is appointed to help oversee election law? Seriously?
Jake Hoffman (Photo: Town of Queen Creek)
The newly elected legislator who ran what amounts to an internet troll farm — paying teens to post conservative talking points and baseless conspiracy theories aimed at getting President Donald Trump re-elected — has been appointed to the state House committee that oversees elections.
No, really.
House Speaker Rusty Bowers this week not only appointed incoming Rep. Jake Hoffman to the House Government and Elections Committee, he made this minister of disinformation the panel’s vice chairman.
The Washington Post in September exposed Hoffman’s Rally Forge, a digital marketing firm that paid teenagers, some of them minors, to set up fake personas and blanket social media with thousands of nearly identical posts aimed at undermining confidence in the validity of election and downplaying the impact of COVID-19.
Their posts, often replies to news stories, created the appearance of a social media groundswell of youth support for conservative causes but actually were slightly edited comments lifted from a shared document, according to the Post
Inside the Weird, and Booming, Industry of Online Influence
Recently, the business of getting paid to promote a company via your social media has spread pandemic-like.
In the past 10 years, “sponcon,” the business of getting paid to promote a company via your social media, has spread pandemic-like. Sponsored content may be obnoxious (and even morally questionable at times), but it's plenty legal—as long as influencers cop to the fact that they're being paid. The Federal Trade Commission says that if influencers have received money, gifts, or anything else that could affect how users view their mention of a brand or product, they should disclose it prominently in the post. Few do. Unsurprisingly, the agency isn't actively monitoring individual influencers. And the short life of stories on Instagram and Snapchat means it's even easier for covert #ads to simply disappear. Welcome to the weird—and booming—industry of influence.
When it comes to social media shilling, Instagram is by far the fan favorite. People branded as “influencers” posted more than 3.7 million #ads to the platform in 2018. That's 43 percent more than the year before. And those numbers only include the properly disclosed ads.
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