00:06:10.400But I'm going to try to be as fair as possible, stick to discussing the facts of the article
00:06:15.660And where something is my opinion, I'll try to let y'all know.
00:06:18.940All right, Bridget. So what is in this article?
00:06:21.720So in this article, Taylor Lorenz digs into a program called Chorus, where a handful of progressive social media creators are paid along a tier system.
00:06:31.440The highest end of the tier being $8,000 a month, the lowest end of the tier being $250 a month.
00:06:38.300OK. And so in this program, what are these influencers getting paid for?
00:06:42.720It sounds to me like a training program or a fellowship.
00:06:47.020On social media, creators in the program have described getting training on things like how to make better use of YouTube and how to tighten their messaging and stuff like that.
00:06:55.340The creators say that they are paid to attend these meetings and trainings, which is pretty typical of a fellowship.
00:07:00.600Here's a bit from the frequently asked questions on the Chorus website.
00:11:28.660could probably lead a reasonable reader
00:11:31.000to think that something more nefarious
00:11:33.080than what is actually being described is happening.
00:11:36.100because when I read that bit, I thought, oh, it sounds like Chorus is controlling how these
00:11:41.940creators can connect with elected officials. But in that follow-up interview that Lorenz did with
00:11:46.760Destiny that we just heard, it actually sounds like she's not saying that at all. It sounds like
00:11:51.660Taylor is actually saying these creators can book interviews with elected officials through Chorus
00:11:56.600or they can book interviews with elected officials on their own independently as they've always been
00:12:02.180doing just as long as they give chorus a heads up. So Lorenz is correct that the article never
00:12:07.520flat out explicitly says creators contracts gives chorus control over what elected officials they
00:12:13.540can and can't speak to and about what and how. But then my question would be, then what is meant to
00:12:18.360be the takeaway from even including that bit if really it is just a standard humdrum provision
00:12:24.260that like, oh, creators are basically free to do whatever they want when it comes to booking
00:12:27.300interviews, just give us a heads up. So in my opinion, there are pieces of the article that
00:12:32.800inadvertently or not are leading to the impression that something more nefarious is going on than
00:12:39.300what is actually stated to be happening. And that sort of nefarious yet unstated implication
00:12:45.640is the thing being litigated on social media, not what the article actually says is going on.
00:12:51.520That makes a lot of sense because, you know, I read through this article and it does give one the sense that something nefarious is happening.
00:13:00.680But then that quote that we just read being talked about in the interview there, I think is a good example where one sentence says that creators in the program must funnel all bookings with lawmakers and leaders through chorus.
00:13:13.320But then the next sentence says that actually they don't need to do that.
00:13:17.180And so it's not even just the word funnel, but it's like the words around it.
00:13:20.900you know, must funnel all bookings, it really strongly implies something that is then contradicted
00:13:28.200in the next sentence. And yeah, to your point, like what are we meant to take away from that?
00:13:32.680Like all bookings must be funneled except for the ones that aren't. Yeah. Creators must funnel all
00:13:38.260bookings through chorus unless they don't want to. Then just give them a heads up. I genuinely don't
00:13:43.120know what we as the audience are meant to take away from that. So it's not clear to me why it's
00:13:47.540included. And this is just one specific piece that stood out to me, but there's more stuff
00:13:52.680like this throughout the piece that we'll talk more about. Let's take a quick break.
00:14:17.540everything run a business and not thinking about podcasting think again more americans listen to
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00:14:44.320844-844-IHEART to get started. That's 844-844-IHEART. If your bookshelf and your for you page are
00:14:51.300equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast
00:14:58.160that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives,
00:15:02.640and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:15:07.560I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books,
00:15:10.860the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:15:14.680I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:19:50.420So first, I have followed Elizabeth Booker and I can say that she has spoken out about Gaza.
00:19:55.800But to be honest, this post from Taylor kind of confused me because if Taylor Lorenz agrees that Corus is not controlling what kind of content the cohort can post, I don't understand what she is trying to imply here.
00:20:09.540Is she saying that Corist actually is preventing members of the cohort from speaking out about Palestine?
00:20:15.560Then how come, as she points out in this post, some of the cohort has been able to be very vocal about it?
00:20:21.640Like, I genuinely don't understand the implication here, and I don't really have an answer for what's going on.
00:20:27.740And if these influencers are being paid to not talk about Gaza, that would be a huge story.
00:20:34.840But it seems like Lorenz isn't saying that that's what's going on here, but is also kind of acting as if that's what's going on here.
00:20:43.200So when I say that the piece, in my opinion, has led to people kind of inferring something nefarious is happening without really outright saying what that nefarious thing is beyond the financial disclosures, which we'll get to in a minute.
00:20:55.060That's kind of what I mean. And a bit of a side note about this.
00:20:58.660I have what I will own might be a bit of an unpopular opinion about this.
00:21:03.340something that I find really interesting is how the genocide in Gaza online has become kind of
00:21:10.140a litmus test to keep track of who said what and when, right? There is absolutely reason to side-eye
00:21:16.860people with huge platforms who have not been using those platforms to speak up about Gaza.
00:21:21.160But to me, sometimes online, it can sort of turn into a way to gotcha people to prove that they
00:21:28.100aren't as progressive or something. And I just sort of don't like the idea of a genuine genocide
00:21:33.700that is killing people, children, being turned into a way to win an online argument or score
00:21:39.540points on social media. And the fact that some of this response to the article has turned into
00:21:45.200these creators essentially having to prove that they were not paid by the Democrats to be silent
00:21:50.320on Gaza, even though the article never specifically even alleges that to be the case, I think just
00:21:56.200shows how reductive some of the conversation online has gotten. And to me, that reveals
00:22:01.340another point. The article itself never says this whole thing is connected to the Democratic Party,
00:22:07.080but I can see how readers would walk away with that impression.
00:22:10.400Yeah, me too. You know, I think even though the article doesn't explicitly say it,
00:22:15.380the implication is clear that there's this effort by powerful forces on the left to control the left,
00:22:21.940even though as you said it isn't explicitly stated in the article but the vagary is a feature of it
00:22:28.620not a bug and then people can project whatever worldview they have onto that vagary yeah that's
00:22:36.020a good way to put it you know the piece calls the creators in the program democratic political
00:22:41.520influencers and some of them do have documented relationships with the democratic party things
00:22:46.840like attending the Democratic National Convention as a content creator, which, full disclosure,
00:22:52.260I also attended the Democratic National Convention as a content creator. I was not paid,
00:22:57.920not by a long shot. I actually paid several hundreds of dollars out of my own pocket to
00:23:03.900go to the Democratic National Convention as a content creator. I actually have been kind of
00:23:08.360meaning to make an episode about what that experience was like. I'm still sort of wrestling
00:23:13.060with whether or not this would actually be interesting for anyone to listen to or not.
00:23:18.440You know, it was the Democratic Party's inaugural class of kind of influencers,
00:23:24.140contact creators, sending them to the Democratic National Convention the same way that you would
00:23:27.460send other journalists. So I've attended both the Republican National Convention and the
00:23:31.500Democratic National Convention as a traditional journalist and as part of this like cohort of
00:23:38.700content creators influencers i don't know maybe i'll make an episode about that but the main
00:23:43.440thing that i took away from that experience was that and i mean no shade to contact creators
00:23:48.440because i respect them and i in some ways i think i am adjacent to content creators but going to the
00:23:54.580dnc as part of a cohort of content creators really illustrated to me that i am not a content creator
00:24:00.440like i don't know exactly what i am but i know that i am something else if that makes sense
00:24:06.380I have been after you to make that episode since you came back, because I thought what
00:24:11.680you had to say was pretty interesting, and I suspect listeners would, too.
00:24:15.360And so, listeners, if you want Bridget to talk about it, send us an email.
00:25:54.980Chorus is a 501c4 nonprofit organization with grassroots support from over 5,000 individuals since launching in December 2024.
00:26:03.740We're grateful to those who understand the importance of investing in the independent media ecosystem to make sure that content creators have access to training and tools that help them grow.
00:26:12.200But the Wired article names the 1630 Fund as Chorus's donor.
00:26:18.040I will say right now that the relationship between 1630 and Chorus is a little bit unclear to me.
00:26:25.120The article does not give, as far as I can tell, any evidence to confirm that 1630 is actually the entity funding the cash that then goes to pay creators.
00:26:35.680To be clear, it is entirely possible that that is the case.
00:26:39.040I just can't personally speak to it, and I don't feel like the article paints a clear enough portrait to say one way or the other definitively.
00:26:45.580This is a little bit wonky, but I have seen folks say that 1630 is not actually Chorus's funder in the sense that it is not providing money to Chorus, you know, the money that then goes to pay the creators, but that 1630 is actually Chorus's fiscal sponsor.
00:27:03.060A fiscal sponsor is a nonprofit organization that agrees to let another project or group, usually one that does not have its own nonprofit status, use its legal tax-exempt status.
00:27:15.000This is a totally commonplace occurrence in the nonprofit world.
00:27:19.840So I sometimes do trainings on how to spot things like media manipulation and disinformation online.
00:27:25.060online, if I wanted to continue doing that work as a nonprofit and try to get grant funding to
00:27:31.340support it, I could either, one, go through the very complicated process of setting up my own
00:27:37.660nonprofit for myself, or two, I could find another organization that is already a nonprofit and they
00:27:44.400could act as my fiscal sponsor so that I could do that work under their nonprofit umbrella and be
00:27:50.200eligible for grant funding to do it. So I don't know if this is the kind of arrangement that
00:27:55.340Corus does have with 1630. Here's what the article says about the 1630 fund and Corus's
00:28:01.300relationship with them. In 2018, the 1630 fund provided $141 million to more than 100 left-leaning
00:28:08.280causes in order to bolster Democratic support during the midterms, according to a tax filing
00:28:13.400obtained by Politico. In 2020, the fund distributed more than $400 million, according to the
00:28:18.640organization's public tax filing, which Politico said was used in efforts to unseat then-President
00:28:23.580Donald Trump and Republicans' Senate majority. In 2022, 1630 funds spent $196 million backing
00:28:30.480state ballot measures on abortion rights heading into midterms, according to NBC. Just four donors
00:28:36.140accounted for close to two-thirds of the fund's revenue in 2023, according to its tax filings.
00:28:40.740The major donor group gave $50.5 million, with others donating $31.4 million, $21.8 million, and $13.6 million.
00:28:51.560The 1630 fund, which is not required to disclose its contributors, has for years been a major funding source for liberal and progressive causes and groups, including those that spend in elections, says Walker Davis, a research director for the Open Government Group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
00:29:08.400Though their recent tax returns indicate that they have pulled back from the eye-popping sums they raised and spent in 2020,
00:29:14.500the organization is still one of the top-spending politically-oriented nonprofits in the country.
00:29:20.200So here's what it has to say about the actual relationship between Chorus and 1630.
00:29:25.920Chorus, which is described in contracts reviewed by Wired as a project of the 1630 Fund that handles operations for the Creator Program,
00:29:35.080launched in November, 2024, with ties to Good Influence, a for-profit influencer marketing
00:29:41.020agency aimed at helping content creators connect with social good campaigns.
00:29:45.660So this is really kind of all that it says.
00:29:48.860And I think that Chorus being a, quote, project of 1630 could honestly mean a lot of things.
00:29:56.440I could pretty easily see an organization calling themselves a project of their fiscal
00:30:02.980This is the kind of thing that happens in the nonprofit space all of the time.
00:30:06.340I would need to see more information to be able to say one way or another.
00:30:10.380But to me, whether or not 1630 is a financial backer or fiscal sponsor is critical to the central argument that is being made in this article.
00:30:21.620So it's kind of a shame that we don't know more specifics about what is going on here.
00:30:26.020If 1630 is indeed the fiscal sponsor, I think the entire premise of the article kind of falls
00:30:32.360apart. So it would have been a good thing to clarify and make super duper clear in this piece.
00:30:37.420So without knowing more information myself, it's hard for me to really say much about this
00:30:42.980particular piece of it. However, I did used to work as an online organizer for the Sunlight
00:30:48.340Foundation, an organization that was dedicated to government transparency and transparency around
00:30:53.280money and politics. So I can sort of speak to it generally. 1630 is what's known as a dark money
00:31:00.220group, a political nonprofit organization usually operating under what's known as a 501c4 that can
00:31:06.840spend money to influence elections and public policy without disclosing its donors. But not
00:31:13.140every 501c4 is a dark money group. The big piece to understand here is that what distinguishes a
00:31:19.480501c4 from a dark money group is that a 501c4 is a social welfare organization. They're allowed to
00:31:26.000do a mix of charitable or community work and political advocacy. Many of them do things that
00:31:31.780are only loosely political or not political at all, like community groups, local civic leagues,
00:31:37.160or issue-based nonprofits. You can probably think of some 501c4s that are doing great work,
00:31:43.080like the Sierra Club or the League of Women Voters. So yes, these groups do advocacy and
00:31:48.260they do lobbying, but they are not just pass-throughs for anonymous money into election
00:31:53.380ads. Like they're known organizations with visible memberships and transparent public
00:31:58.240activities. So what separates these 501c4s from traditional dark money groups is that dark money
00:32:04.760groups spend significant amounts of money in elections on things like ads for and against
00:32:10.140candidates, voter mobilization, etc. They do that while intentionally going out of their way to keep
00:32:16.780their donors secret. I just want to jump in briefly because I feel obligated to remind
00:32:21.720listeners that we as Americans briefly had a period when dark money in politics was more
00:32:28.280severely restricted. A lot of our listeners, I think, might be too young to remember,
00:32:32.580but the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002 substantially reduced its impact. There was this bipartisan
00:32:39.120agreement that was pretty effective for a few years at reducing the amount of dark money in
00:32:45.500politics. And it was great for democracy for all of eight years until John Roberts and the Supreme
00:32:51.660Court pretty much decimated it in 2010. And I think this is important context for this conversation,
00:32:58.260even though it hasn't been the law for the past 15 years. But I think it's important to remember
00:33:03.440that Congress acting on behalf of the American people was like, nah, this dark money stuff is
00:33:07.400no good. We have to get it out of here. And so they passed a law to outlaw it. But then the
00:33:11.800Supreme Court led by John Roberts, who is still there today, continuing to lead it, essentially
00:33:17.340just gutted that law. And so now dark money is everywhere. And so pretty much any political ad
00:33:22.960you might see, unless it's coming directly from a candidate's official campaign, is probably funded
00:33:28.200with dark money. It's just everywhere. That's just the reality that we are living in in America.
00:33:33.100Yes, that is important context. I will say it does get a little bit murky, this distinction between
00:33:39.760501c4s and dark money because it's not 100% cut and dry these days. The IRS only requires that
00:33:47.680politics not be a 501c4s, quote, primary activity. But primary is not very clearly defined. So in
00:33:56.100practice, a lot of 501c4s do spend quite heavily on politics without being considered traditionally
00:34:02.840dark money groups. This is why people are able to say like, oh, if you took money from MoveOn,
00:34:07.900you took dark money. And they can say that and have it be, I guess, sort of technically a tiny
00:34:14.780little bit true because groups like MoveOn can receive anonymous donations because they have a
00:34:20.080C4 arm. But it is actually mostly not true because they're not really dark money groups
00:34:25.720because their political activities are public. It is a bit nuanced because I think it goes to show
00:34:30.820that whether a group is technically a traditional dark money group or not, it is hard to know the
00:34:36.440exact sources of every single dollar when it comes to these kinds of organizations,
00:34:41.300even those organizations that are not technically traditional dark money groups,
00:34:45.220precisely because there are structures that those groups can use to obscure it.
00:34:49.120It's just not very cut and dry. So I know that's a little bit in the weeds and wonky,
00:34:53.460but remember that distinction because it's going to become important for a claim that
00:34:56.960is being personally made against Taylor Lorenz in a moment.
00:35:00.700And Bridget, I just want to commend you for the clarity of that piece about fiscal sponsors and
00:35:05.300501c4s like man uh i know that is not your bread and butter talking about that stuff but uh
00:35:12.340you know good work getting through it clearly well that's my that's kind of my thing about this0.79
00:35:18.880article is that the actual substance of it is like wonky and quite boring and it's not surprising to
00:35:26.400me that people are like focusing on something else when the actual meat of it is comes down to
00:35:31.860the distinction between 501c4s and 501c3s and fiscal sponsors like i understand why people
00:35:37.140are like oh boring let's just attack a bunch of creators on social media that's much better
00:41:54.640And I also kind of see where these creators are coming from when they say, you know, if I say I'm a chorus partner, if I talk about my relationship with chorus publicly, that should be enough disclosure.
00:42:03.680Like, how far back am I as a chorus creator expected to go when I'm disclosing?
00:42:10.500It sounds like what these creators are saying on social media is that this feels like Taylor Lorenz setting a standard that they don't personally feel is fair.
00:42:21.980And what are we talking? Are we talking ethical standards or legal standards?
00:42:27.900Well, if you want to get into what the law says, the law is actually not super clear here because political influencers don't face the same kinds of disclosure rules that product influencers do.
00:42:39.640You know, when somebody is paid to promote a product like a handbag or makeup, the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, requires them to use things like hashtag ad or otherwise disclose that it is a sponsorship.
00:42:51.260But the FTC's authority is limited to commercial speech, not politics.
00:42:56.200Political content falls under the FEC, the Federal Elections Commission, which mainly
00:43:00.900requires campaigns and PACs to report their spending to the government, not for influencers
00:43:05.800to disclose it directly to their followers in their content.
00:43:08.300That means that political influencers really don't have to add hashtag ad or any kind of
00:43:13.660similar tags, even if they're being paid.
00:43:15.920In the article, Taylor Lorenz quotes Graham Wilson, a lawyer working with Chorus from a Zoom he did with the creators, where he said,
00:43:23.520There are some real advantages to housing this program at a nonprofit. It gives us the ability to raise money from donors.
00:43:29.400It also, with this structure, it avoids a lot of the public disclosure or public disclaimers, you know, paid for by blah, blah, blah, that you see on political ads.
00:43:37.500We don't need to deal with any of that. Your names aren't showing up on reports filed with the FEC.
00:43:46.300And also it strikes me as the actual substance of the article.
00:43:50.160Now, to be clear, Wilson is correct that legally creators don't have to disclose their financial relationships with their funders to their audiences in their content.
00:44:01.720Ethically, well, that's a much more complicated story.
00:44:05.320And I think the actual question the article raises has been a bit buried.
00:44:10.120And that is, what ethical obligation do creators have to disclose what funding they have gotten?
00:44:16.060And when do they have that obligation?
00:44:18.260If a creator joins a training program where they learn media skills but have creative control over what they say online,
00:44:24.620do they still need to disclose funding for that media training?
00:44:28.060This kind of became a flashpoint because when the article came out,
00:44:32.160some people were really trying to attack Taylor Lorenz personally by saying,
00:44:35.620well, she herself is a journalism fellowship funded by Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire donor
00:44:41.660who founded eBay. So the question was, well, why doesn't Taylor Lorenz have to disclose that she0.96
00:44:46.980is also taking dark money? The difference here is that Omidyar is not a dark money group
00:44:52.660traditionally. Again, you could kind of sort of try to make the argument that they are because
00:44:56.920they do have a C4 arm, which technically means that some of its money could be classified as
00:45:01.240dark money because those donors don't have to be disclosed. But Omidyar is not a dark money group
00:45:07.320in the traditional sense because with Omidyar, you generally know who is behind the money,
00:45:12.400Pierre Omidyar, and you know where that money goes. It is not set up to obscure that fact like
00:45:18.380a true dark money group like 1630 is set up. So to me, that is not really a fair critique of Taylor
00:45:24.940Lorenz at all. I think folks were trying to make the point that it actually is sometimes complicated
00:45:30.860to know where every single source for every single dollar of your income is coming from.
00:45:35.880And then if you're going to be calling out other people on that, you then kind of have to be
00:45:41.020willing for folks to start watching your pockets. And under a system like capitalism, when you
00:45:46.940follow the source for most money that moves around in this country, there might be stuff in there
00:45:52.080that, yeah, we don't love. And I think one of the reasons why people brought this up as a critique
00:45:58.260on Taylor Lorenz in the wake of the article is that, you know, being paid to make content online,
00:46:03.960especially leftist content, is hard. Trust me, very few people out there are getting rich from
00:46:10.720making leftist content on the internet. It is a hustle. So I get the sense that these creators
00:46:16.980sort of feel like they're being pocket-watched a little bit. You know, do you know that phrase,
00:46:21.460pocket-watched? I don't know that phrase, no, but you have my attention. What does it mean?
00:46:26.040So it might be more of a black community phrase, but it's basically the idea that someone is really scrutinizing where the money of someone else comes from.
00:49:02.920So that's one of the reasons that I can't really speak to the contract part of this.
00:49:07.520I would have really liked the opportunity to check out the contract for myself.
00:49:12.140I'm certain that Wired's fact checkers and lawyers reviewed the piece before publishing it,
00:49:16.980but I would have liked for it to be spelled out that a lawyer who specializes in these kind of contracts,
00:49:23.180like not just Wired's general counsel, somebody who was a contract specialist,
00:49:27.480read the contract and confirmed that it said all the things that the article says that it does.
00:49:32.500I don't say that to criticize Taylor Lorenz.
00:49:34.260I just know that contract legalese can be complex to parse.
00:49:38.060I was actually just having a conversation with an attorney about how attorneys who don't specialize in certain kinds of contracts don't necessarily have the experience to know what those contracts say.
00:49:49.460So I think the article could have really just benefited from more of a needy, deep dive into what the contract actually says because it is at the crux of the argument being made in the article.
00:49:59.360But I also don't want to make it seem like I'm just dismissing what Lorenz has brought up here.
00:50:04.900There are pieces raised in the article that I think are absolutely worth talking about.
00:50:09.160A big one is, should dark money groups even exist?
00:50:13.160You know, the 1630 Fund is a dark money group, but even their executive director, Amy Kurtz,
00:50:18.060has written publicly about this in an op-ed written after the 2024 election.
00:53:07.700It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:53:15.600Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:53:24.760Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:54:54.100We know that when you see a right wing or men's rights or manosphere creator on social media, odds are that they're being funded by some big, wealthy, shadowy right wing organization.
00:55:05.660And you can bet your ass that they are not always disclosing the kinds of financial relationships or money that they might be being paid to say those things online.
00:55:12.800So the ethical question the piece raises, which I think is a worthwhile one, is should Dems be replicating the same questionable playbooks that folks on the right are expertly utilizing?0.76
00:55:24.700Because when it comes down to dominating the media ecosystem, it seems like folks on the left are bringing a tote bag of books to a gunfight.
00:55:33.360There has been so much talk of needing the Joe Rogan of the left, and a lot of the reaction
00:55:38.200to Lorenz's piece has been people saying, well, if folks on the right are doing it,
00:55:48.960Honestly, I don't really have the answer here.
00:55:51.140I care quite a lot about transparency in government and politics.
00:55:55.700I think that people should have information about whose money and what money drives our
00:56:00.620government and our politics and our democracy.0.98
00:56:02.700And sure, I don't want Dems to be unable to make use of the same tactics that the right is kicking their ass with.0.94
00:56:09.120But I also don't like the idea of a government dominated by big money with no transparency.0.76
00:56:14.720Essentially, it is one thing to say dark money groups should not exist.
00:56:19.340It is another to say dark money groups exist, but only the right should use them to further their ideology.
00:56:26.080Because the right is really using them to further their ideology.
00:56:30.520They are really using them and they are really using them effectively.
00:56:34.340It gives me no joy to say it, but they've kind of been crushing it with respect to dominating the narrative and taking over our democracy lately.
00:56:41.720Well, the article brings up the Tenet media scandal, which I think that should have been one of the biggest stories of the year, but somehow it wasn't, where it was revealed that right wing media personalities like Tim Poole were being paid by Russia to make content.
00:57:00.040The structure of the program highlights the vast differences between how Democrats and Republicans attempt to amass online influence.
00:57:06.940Republicans have spent decades building up a powerful, independent media ecosystem.
00:57:11.280Though, the right-wing influencer world is far from transparent.
00:57:14.900In September 2024, a federal indictment alleged the Russian state-sponsored network RT was covertly providing millions in funding to tenant media.
00:57:23.080a company working with major right-wing influencers, including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Lauren Southern.
00:57:29.600That story is so unbelievable. I can't believe it wasn't a bigger deal.
00:57:36.100If we lived in a sane country, there would have been intense fallout from that.
00:57:41.000There would have been outrage all around. People would still be talking about it.
00:57:44.540It would have been like a historical violation of national security.
00:57:47.920New laws would have been created to outlaw that very specific method for foreign countries to influence U.S. elections. But we did nothing. Absolutely nothing changed. And that's the media environment we live in.0.54
00:58:01.340So, you know, and it's been like this since the Supreme Court gutted McCain-Feingold 15 years ago. And so I also love transparency and think we should have so more of it. But it's just pretty hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of the left unilaterally disarming while our information ecosystem is just absolutely on fire.
00:58:21.960Yes. And so I think that that question that you just brought up is what we're sort of not grappling with because we're talking about whether these individual creators are good or bad or shills or whatever, and not examining the larger sort of dark money ecosystem at play here.
00:58:40.940I really hate that the resounding fallout has been around conversation around specific creators to the point where the dark money aspect of it and the information ecosystem aspect of it really feels like an afterthought.
00:58:55.840And, you know, it's not like these creators wrote the chorus contract themselves.
00:58:59.960In fact, the piece includes text messages from a group chat where the creators are pretty clearly not thrilled about a lot of the contract.
00:59:07.140It honestly sounds to me like these creators got kind of high pressured into signing a not great contract, which is something I know a thing or two about in my day.
00:59:17.540You know, one bit of the article says that Chorus only gave the creators seven days to sign the contract and that they were not allowed to have their attorneys redline it, which is a major, major red flag for me personally.
00:59:29.420I would never agree to an exploding offer.
00:59:32.600If you are offering me something and you don't want me to take the time I need to fully examine it and think about it,
00:59:38.920that is not an offer that I want to sign personally.
00:59:41.540I also would never agree to a contract where I was specifically told I was not allowed to show it to my attorney or redline it.
00:59:48.520You know, in this game, everything is negotiable.
00:59:51.500And especially as somebody who doesn't make a ton of money from any one thing I do,
00:59:54.900the ability to look at a contract and say, well, can we change this? Can we change that? Like
00:59:59.540when you're not making a ton of money, sometimes that's the only real power or currency you have.
01:00:04.400And so personally, it does sound like to me Chorus is operating under some shady contract
01:00:11.000dynamics. But now these creators are essentially being held to account for the details of this
01:00:17.500contract that they did not write. When I think the real entity on trial here should be the people
01:00:23.200who wrote the contract and our campaign finance system that allows for this kind of thing to be
01:00:28.100legal. Like, don't hate the player, hate the game. Yeah. And there's plenty to hate in the game of
01:00:34.180American campaign finance. There is plenty to hate there. But you're right. That doesn't really
01:00:40.260seem to be like at the center of the online controversy, the online controversy that has
01:00:45.840been sustained for 10 days now, which is longer than the most news stories. It has seemed like
01:00:53.440pretty personal about the specific creators, about Taylor Lorenz herself. And so it is interesting
01:00:59.100that the tenant media case where a bunch of right wing influencers were caught taking money from
01:01:04.220Russia to promote pro-Russian points got comparatively so little attention compared to
01:01:10.380this story about a handful of left-leaning influencers. Yes. And I would say that if I
01:01:17.120had any kind of big point about this whole thing is that I think that how we talk about this stuff
01:01:23.120online is completely broken. First of all, that article, I'll just say, in my opinion,
01:01:30.180it is no short read. I read it. You read it. This is going to be where you're like, oh,
01:01:34.700I regularly read 10,000 word articles all the time just for fun. It's like, would you categorize
01:01:40.320it as a long read it was a long read it was a long article um i wouldn't say that it was like
01:01:47.800redundant or like oh obviously they should have cut this this and that um but it was a long
01:01:54.240article i just you know kept reading and reading and there was more to read there was a lot to it
01:01:59.740and so yeah i i do wonder how many people have like actually sat down and read the whole thing
01:02:04.620i would wager to guess that a lot of people commenting on the article on social media have
01:02:08.940not actually read the whole thing. They are going from what the social media chatter has been about
01:02:14.140it online. Even after listening to this episode, I do think that people should read the article for
01:02:19.700themselves and make up their own minds about it because, you know, don't take my word for it,
01:02:23.740read the article yourself. But as somebody who has read the article several times and knows a
01:02:29.380little bit about some of the issues that it raises, I can tell you the online chatter about the piece
01:02:34.740has really misrepresented it regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of agreeing with the
01:02:40.980piece or not agreeing with the piece. I saw people say, oh, this article explains why all the
01:02:47.000progressive influencers and creators all started fawning over Gavin Newsom at the same time.
01:02:52.100But the article never says that the creators were paid to post specific messages or content online.
01:02:58.260I also saw people saying the article had been corrected or retracted. Wired did add an update to the end of the piece, but the article hasn't been retracted or corrected.
01:03:09.380Like those are specific things that have specific meaning and they have not happened to this article.
01:03:13.600But here is my ultimate takeaway. I think even though this piece is about a kind of boring specific thing, you know, financial disclosures of political influencers, in my opinion, it is written in a kind of way that gives the impression of a larger, more nefarious thing happening.
01:03:33.200You know, that dark money is being used to control what big leftist influencers say online, and thus our media ecosystem is being manipulated to push Democratic Party messaging.
01:03:44.580Now, that very well may be true, but this article does not paint that portrait at all in any specific way.
01:03:52.200And I get why readers would be inclined to ignore the less sexy but also important question of financial disclosures that I think the piece is actually trying to raise.
01:04:02.660Like, who would want to focus on the difference between 501c3s and 501c4 tax designations when you could be speculating about whether or not this big influencer who was mean to you two years ago on social media is a paid shill?
01:04:15.660I think the article can be interpreted in such a way that it invites readers to sort of read between the lines and speculate that any of the frustrations that they might have felt with the Democratic Party is explained by this article, and that is just not the case.
01:04:28.820I think that's why it has caused such a stir online.
01:04:32.700The article has given people carte blanche to project their broader frustration with Democrats onto these creators, treating them as paid party shills, even though that does not even seem to be the point the piece itself was making.
01:04:45.780So to me, this piece is not really about individual creators and whether they're good or bad or shills or whatever.
01:04:52.080it is about the bigger system we all live in, a campaign finance system that lets billions of
01:04:57.860dollars move through politics without much transparency. Whether it's Chorus, 1630 Fund,
01:05:03.420or the right-wing media machine, money in politics shapes the information we all see online.
01:05:09.100And until that changes, we're going to keep running into stories like this one.
01:05:12.860That's why I think the real question isn't which influencer got paid what,
01:05:16.720but how do we build a media and political ecosystem that people can actually trust?
01:05:22.080Who do we trust to shape our politics?
01:05:24.060And what happens when even good creators get pulled into systems designed to obscure power