September 9, 2025 • 58 mins
Last week in Wired, Taylor Lorenz published an exposé on Chorus, a new force in Democratic politics that is funding Democratic influencers. Her piece has sparked major controversy among political influencers and their observers online.
In this episode, Bridget breaks down what the article reveals (and what it leaves out), and explores what this fight says about money, power, and trust in American democracy.
Read the full piece here: https://www.wired.com/story/dark-money-group-secret-funding-democrat-influencers/
If you’re listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment there to let us know what you thought about these stories, or email us at hello@tangoti.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, this is Future Bridget. We did a whole, very
detailed episode breaking down the controversy about how political content
creators in a program called Chorus are paid, and I
realized after that episode was recorded that I did not
make it explicitly clear that I am not connected to
Chorus in any capacity. I am not on their payroll.
(00:21):
I am not a Chorus member. By way of my
own financial disclosures for the last year, the majority of
my income has come from my various podcast gigs and
a few speaking training gigs, and I just wanted to
make that clear. Okay, here's the episode There Are No
(00:41):
Girls on the Internet, as a production of iHeartRadio and
Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are
No Girls on the Internet. Last week, journalist Taylor Lerenz
published a piece in Wired called a dark money group
is secretly funding high profile democratic influencers. The article blew
(01:06):
up on social media, namely on threads, and here to
talk through it with me is producer Mike. Mike, thank
you for being here.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Happy to be here, Thanks for inviting me. This is
continuing to be a pretty big story, and I know
it's something that you have been spending a lot of
time thinking about and so I'm excited to hear what
you've got to say, Bridget.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Well, before we get into the weeds, let me set
the stakes here a little bit, because this is not
just some influencer drama unfolding on social media. The steaks
are very real. This is about money and how it
shapes what we see online. But still, the conversation about
Taylor Lorenzo's article very quickly shifted from that bigger picture
(01:48):
into a lot of stuff that I have to be honest,
I was not super excited to be waiting into I
actually was kind of trying to stay out of this
whole thing. But you know what, I guess I'm waiting
into it.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Wish me luck, Yeah, good luck, Bridget good luck out
there in here, everywhere, good luck everywhere. Why are you
so interested in staying out of it? Is seems like this,
you know, tech politics, this is your beat, No, it
is my beat.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I feel I would be remiss to not mention that
this particular article has become something of a battleground for
what seems like litigating a lot of grievances. There have
been lots of personal attacks flying on social media in
the wake of this article, and honestly, it just is
not the kind of thing I'm super interested in or
(02:40):
comfortable waiting into. Like as much as I love talking
about the Internet and talking about what's unfolded on social media,
I don't love getting mixed up in this level of
back and forth as it happens. In my opinion, it's
like a little bit harder to thoughtfully talk about Internet
drama internet disputes if you are also super mixed up
(03:00):
in them. So generally speaking, I try to stay out
of that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
You know, something that I've always admired slash marveled about
with you is the way that you are really tuned
into these conversations in a way like much closer than
I am, like multiple orders of magnitude more closely than
I am. But still you're not actually part of what's
happening online. Sometimes you're not getting caught up in I
(03:29):
guess that the Internet drama, Mike.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
This article came out on August twenty seventh, and currently
right now, as of today, September seventh, the fallout and
back and forth on social media is ongoing. It's still
happening as we speak. That is like ten days of
internet drama, basically the Coachella of Internet drama. I know
(03:51):
myself and I know that I simply do not have
the stamina to be involved.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Ten days is a crazy long time for anything to
be news. Like Trump like blew up some civilians off
the coast of Venezuela last week, and we've already moved
on from talking about it.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, that ten ten days is staying power. So all
of that to say, I'm going to try to keep
this conversation really focused on the substance of the article,
not the ongoing social media fallout. Maybe we could do
a follow up episode about the social media conversation the
article generated, because it has been a lot. If you're
listening and you want to know what's going on with that,
(04:29):
just check threads. It will be very clear what's happening.
Just check threads. But I'm going to try to be
as fair as possible, stick to discussing the facts of
the article, and where something is my opinion, I'll try
to let y'all know.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
All right, bridget so what is in this article?
Speaker 1 (04:45):
So 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, the highest end of
the tier being eight thousand dollars a month, the lowest
end of the tier being two one hundred and fifty
dollars a month.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Okay, and so in this program, what are these influencers
getting paid for?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
It sounds to me like a training program or a
fellowship on 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. The creators say that they are paid to
attend these meetings and trainings, which is pretty typical of
a fellowship. Here's a bit from the frequently asked questions
on the Chorus website question will I be paid to
(05:29):
make content? Answer? Nope. Coorus is a creator led, nonpartisan
nonprofit with a really different model in the creator space.
We don't pay creators to produce content. We just give
you the space to learn about how to communicate effectively
and grow your platforms. In other words, creators are free
to post what they want when they want. This includes
their affiliation with Chorus. I should say that I don't
(05:50):
know when this information was added to their website. So essentially,
this article says that these high profile progressive creators with
millions of followers signed on to this restrict of contract
with Chorus that puts restrictions on what they can talk about,
how they can engage with Leston officials, and forbid them
from disclosing any of the finances around it publicly. A
(06:11):
piece that does not seem to be in dispute here
is that this is in no way the kind of
program where Coorus is paying creators to push specific talking
points or messaging or make specific posts. All parties seem
to agree there, but I am going to try to
sketch out some of the pieces that are in dispute here.
The first is whether or not creators, by signing a
(06:32):
contract with Chorus, are handing Chorus control over how they
are able to connect with elected officials. A lot of
the contact creators in this cohort have been regularly interviewing
and speaking to elected officials on their platforms, which I
know is kind of a big deal if you're an
independent creator and not affiliated with a larger news network
or agency. Right like having a big name political figure
(06:54):
on your Instagram or on your TikTok to do an
interview is a big deal, and I think the implicate
in the article is that Chorus could be trying to
control how creators signed to the program deal with elets
of officials. If I'm able to book an interview with
let's say, Kamala Harris on my own, the piece argues
that I would still have to funnel that interview through
(07:16):
Chorus to not be in breach of my contract. The
piece includes this bit that includes a quote from a
creator who declined to participate in the program. Many creators
expressed concerns about some of the stipulations. According to copies
of the contract viewed by Wired, creators in the program
must funnel all bookings with lawmakers and political leaders through Chorus.
Creators also have to loop Chorus in on any independently
(07:39):
organized engagements with government officials or political leaders. If I
want to work with another politician, I have to fully
collaborate with them, said one creator who was offered the
contract but ultimately declined to take it and asked not
to be named. If I get Zoron and he wants
to do an interview with me, I don't want to
give that to them. So some creators pushed back on
this claim on social media and have said that not
(08:01):
only does Chorus not require them to book all their
interviews with electeds through Chorus, that even this implication, you
know that they can't use their own hard won lists
of contacts on relationships to book their own interviews was insulting.
And in a follow up interview with popular live streamer
and sex pest Destiny whose real name is Stephen Bondell,
(08:22):
who yes, if you know about Destiny, just know that
I have thoughts about him, but I am going to
try to stay focused here, Taylor Lorenz clarifies in an
interview with Destiny just a heads up, it's kind of
an urally unpleasant clip.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
That funnel like heavily implies that you the way that
the article is written is that Chorus can block you
from doing your own independent media.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
I guess we don't make that claim in this story,
and I'm sorry if the word funnel sort of implied
that to you, but we don't make that claim. So, Stephen,
you brought something up that I think.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Is an one more one more quickly and then you're okay.
You said okay, because I don't know why, because you
use loop Chorus in on the next sentence, why not
just say loop in, because I've never my life heard funnel.
Funnel always means you're handing the reins over to somebody else, right,
like we.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
Are using their program to book it.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
But sure you.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Could also book it on your own, right, because the
next sentence you have is that you can look any
independent organizing them in. Yeah, right, but loop in is
not funnel.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Those are two really.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Different things, right, Okay, okay, so.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Two really different things to loop somebody.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
In personally, don't interpret it that way, but if you
want to interpret it that way, you're welcome to interpret
it that way.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
I wanted to include this clip because I think it
illustrates very well a bit of what I suspect is
happening here. Parts of the article are written in such
a way that, in my opinion, could probably lead a
reasonable reader to think that something more nefarious than what
is actually being described is happening. Because when I read
(10:01):
that bit, I thought, oh, it sounds like Chorus is
controlling how these creators can connect with elected officials. But
in that follow up interview that Lorenz did with Destiny
that we just heard, it actually sounds like she's not
saying that at all. It sounds like Taylor is actually
saying these creators can book interviews with elected officials through Chorus,
or they can book interviews with elected officials on their
(10:23):
own independently, as they've always been doing, just as long
as they give Coorus a heads up. So Lorenz is
correct that the article never flat out explicitly says creators
contracts gives Chorus control over what elected officials they can
and can't speak to you at about what and how.
But then my question would be, then what is meant
to be the takeaway from even including that bit if
(10:44):
really it is just a standard humdrum provision that like, oh,
creators are basically free to do whatever they want when
it comes to booking interviews, just give us a heads up. So,
in my opinion, there are pieces of the article that,
inadvertently or not are leading to the impression that something
more nefarious is going on than what is actually stated
to be happening. And that sort of nefarious yet unstated
(11:08):
implication is the thing being litigated on social media, not
what the article actually says is going on.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
That makes a lot of sense, because you know, I've
read through this article and it does give one the
sense that something the farious is happening. But 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 course, but then the
(11:37):
next sentence says that actually they don't need to do that,
And so it's not even just the word funnel, but
it's like the words around it, you know, must funnel
all bookings. It really strongly implies something that is then
contradicted in the next sentence. And yeah, to your point, like,
what are we meant to take away from that, Like
all bookings must be funneled except for the ones that aren't.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, creators must funnel all bookings through chorus unless they
don't want to, then just give them a heads up.
I genuinely don't know what we as the audience are
meant to take away from that. So it's not clear
to me why it's included. And this is just one
specific piece that stood out to me, But there's more
stuff like this throughout the piece that we'll talk more about.
(12:20):
Let's take a quick break at our back. I think
probably the biggest piece in dispute, and kind of the
crux of why I think this article blew up on
(12:41):
social media the way that it did is the question
of whether or not the Chorus contract restricts what kind
of issues creators can speak on. Here's an example of
what I mean. The piece reads that the contracts placed
quote restrictions on what sort of political content the creators
can produce. But the only specific exam that the article
mentions of the contract stipulating what kind of political issues
(13:04):
creators in the program can speak to is a clause
quote prohibiting the disparagement of other creators. Not being able
to criticize anyone else affiliated with Chorus felt restrictive to some,
according to text messages posted to the chat. So maybe
there's more to it than that. But if that's the case,
it is certainly not mentioned in any kind of specific
(13:24):
way in this article. And when one of the creators
in the cohort, Aaron Parness, pointed out on social media
that the creators were not being paid to create specific
content or specific messaging, Lorenz says that he is correct,
saying Aaron is correct that Chorus didn't pay them to
post specific content. But I do think that the contract
was unethical in how it banned disclosures. So I think
(13:48):
this is a big piece of what's going on here
and why this article touched a nerve in my opinion.
The article seems to suggest, without outright saying it, that
progressive influencers are being paid by dark money to say
or not say certain things about certain political issues. But
then the article doesn't really ever actually illustrate any of
(14:11):
that in any kind of specific way beyond saying that
the creators are not allowed to criticize other creators in
the cohort. But then when you check out the conversation
on social media about the article, you have people saying
things like, oh, well, this explains why big progressive creators
were silent on Gaza, because they were being paid not
to talk about it. But to be clear, the piece
(14:31):
itself never outright says this, but that is clearly the
way it was interpreted by a ton of people online,
to the point where some of the creators in the
program started posting receipts of them publicly talking about Gaza
and their content. Some of the creators in the program
have been very vocal about the issue, and some of
them haven't Lorenz even did a bit of this herself
(14:52):
in an at Times he did exchange with Elizabeth Booker,
a black woman attorney and public health professional and content
who is in Chorus. Lawrenz spoke directly to her, saying, Hi, Elizabeth,
how many creators in the sixteen thirty fund dark money
scheme have used their platform to fight against the Zionist
apartheid and speak aut against the genocide and Gaza. Out
(15:14):
of the ninety creators, it seems like you can only
point to Heidi and Ali, whom was included in the
program after siding with you in an online controversy. How
many of the other of those ninety influencers are calling
out Zionism? Are you some? First? I have followed Elizabeth
Booker and I can say that she has spoken out
about Gaza. But to be honest, this post from Taylor
(15:36):
kind of confused me, because if Taylor Lorenz agrees that
Chorus is not controlling, what kind of contact the Cohort
can post? I don't understand what she is trying to
imply here. Is she saying that Chorus actually is preventing
members of the Cohort from speaking out about Palestine? Then
how come as she points out in this post, some
of the cohort has been able to be very vocal
(15:58):
about it, Like I genuinely don't understand the implication here
and I don't really have an answer for what's going on.
And if these influencers are being paid to not talk
about Gaza, that would be a huge story. But it
seems like Lorenz isn't saying that that's what's going on here,
but it's also kind of acting as if that's what's
(16:20):
going on here. So 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. That's kind of what I mean.
And a bit of a side note about this, I
have what I will own might be a bit of
an unpopular opinion about this. Something that I find really
(16:43):
interesting is how the genocidem Gaza online has become kind
of a litmus test to keep track of who said
what and when right. There is absolutely reason to side
eye people with huge platforms who have not been using
those platforms to speak up about Gaza. But to me,
sometimes online it can sort of turn into a way
(17:03):
to datcha people to prove that they aren't just progressive
or something. And I just sort of don't like the
idea of a genuine genocide that is killing people children
being turned into a way to win an online argument
or score points on social media. And the fact that
some of this response to the article has turned into
these creators essentially having to prove that they were not
(17:26):
paid by the Democrats to be silent on Gaza, even
though the article never specifically even alleges that to be
the case, I think just shows how reductive some of
the conversation online has gotten. And to me that reveals
another point. The article itself never says this whole thing
is connected to the Democratic Party, but I can see
how readers would walk away with that impression.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah, me too, you know, I think even though the
article is explicitly say it, the implication is clear that
there's this effort by powerful forces on the left to
control the left, even though, as you said, it isn't
explicitly stated in the article. But the vagary is a
feature of it, not a bug. And then people can
project whatever worldview they have onto that vagary.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. You know.
The piece calls the creators in the program democratic political influencers,
and some of them do have documented relationships with the
Democratic Party, things like attending the Democratic National Convention as
a contact creator, which full disclosure, I also attended the
Democratic National Convention as a content creator. I was not paid,
(18:35):
not by a long shot. I actually paid several hundreds
of dollars out of my own pocket to go to
the Democratic National Convention as a contact creator. I actually
have been kind of meaning to make an episode about
what that experience was. Like, I'm still sort of wrestling
with whether or not this would actually be interesting for
anyone to listen to or not. You know, it was
(18:57):
the Democratic Party's inaugural class of kind of influencers contact creators,
sending them to the Democratic National Convention the same way
that you would send other journalists. Well, I've attended both
the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention as
a traditional journalist and as part of this like cohort
of contact creators influencers. I don't know, maybe I'll make
(19:19):
an episode about that, but the main thing that I
took away from that experience was that and I mean
no shape to contact creators because I respect them, and
I in some ways I think I am adjacent to
contact creators. But going to the DNC as part of
a cohort of contact creators really illustrated to me that
I am not a contact creator. Like I don't know
exactly what I am, but I know that I am
(19:41):
something else, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I have been after you to make that episode since
you came back because I thought what you had to
say was pretty interesting and I suspect listeners would too.
And so listeners, if you want Bridget to talk about it,
send us an email hello to tangyote dot com.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
I mean, I gotta stay focused on this, but we
can make we can make that episode. We can make
that episode.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
I found it interesting.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
So the piece just sort of lumps all of these
creators as being in with the Democratic Party in a
way that kind of suggests that they are essentially paid
mouthpieces for the Democratic Party on social media. Consider the
subhead of the article, which reads, an initiative aimed at
boosting Democrats online offers influencers up to eight thousand dollars
(20:26):
a month to push the party line. But when one
of the creators in the cohort asked Taylor Lorenz on
Threads what evidence that she had that these creators were
being paid specifically to push democratic messaging online like the
subhead says, she said, quote, I hear you on the feedback.
Reporters don't write subheadings. Horus was always public, but the
funding was not. I do think that funding sources across
(20:49):
the political spectrum should be disclosed. Transparency is good. So again,
it kind of sounds like what Lorenz is repeating is
that the whole thing is about financial disclosure, not how
much is being used to control what influencers can and
can't say online, Which makes the fact that all of
the dust that has been kicked up around this article
is really about whether or not these creators are essentially
(21:11):
paid shills for the Democratic Party really curious to me,
Which brings me to my biggest and most complicated, and
to be honest, probably most boring dispute raised in the piece,
which is exactly who is funding Chorus and is that
funding being properly disclosed? So who is funding Chorus? Well,
this is from Chorus's website. Chorus is a five h
(21:33):
one c four nonprofit organization with grassroots support from over
five thousand individuals since launching in December twenty twenty four.
We'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.
But the Wired article names the sixteen thirty fund as
(21:54):
Chorus's donor. I will say right now that the relationship
between sixteen thirty and Chorus is a little bit unclear
to me. The article does not give, as far as
I can tell, any evidence to confirm that sixteen thirty
is actually the entity funding the cash that then goes
to pay creators. To be clear, it is entirely possible
(22:15):
that that is the case. I 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,
this is a little bit wonky. But I have seen
folks say that sixteen thirty is not actually Coorus's funder,
in the sense that it is not providing money to Chorus,
you know, the money that then goes to pay the creators.
(22:36):
But that sixteen thirty is actually Coorus's fiscal sponsor. A
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.
This is a totally commonplace occurrence in the nonprofit world,
(22:57):
so I sometimes do trainings on how to spot things
like medium manipulation and disinformation online. If I wanted to
continue doing that work as a nonprofit and try to
get grant funding to support it, I could either one
go through the very complicated process of setting up my
own nonprofit for myself, or two, I could find another
(23:19):
organization that is already a nonprofit and they could act
as my fiscal sponsor so that I could do that
work under their nonprofit umbrella and be eligible for grant
funding to do it. So I don't know if this
is the kind of arrangement that Chorus does have with
sixteen thirty. Here's what the article says about the sixteen
thirty Fund and Corrus's relationship with them. In twenty eighteen,
(23:41):
the sixteen thirty Fund provided one hundred and forty one
million dollars to more than one hundred left leading causes
in order to bolster democratic support during the midterms. According
to a tax filing of pain by Politico in twenty twenty,
the fund distributed more than four hundred million dollars according
to the organization's public tax filing, which Politico said was
used in efforts to unseat then President Donald Trump and
(24:02):
Republicans Senate majority. In twenty twenty two, sixteen thirty Fund
spent one hundred and ninety six million dollars backing state
ballot measures on abortion rights heading into midterms. According to NBC,
just four donors accounted for close to two thirds of
the funds revenue in twenty twenty three. According to its
tax filings, the major donor group gave fifty point five
million dollars, with others donating thirty one point four million dollars,
(24:25):
twenty one point eight million dollars, and thirteen point six
million dollars. The sixteen thirty Fund, which is not required
to disclose its contributors, has for years been a major
funding source for liberal and progressive causes in 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. Though their recent tax returns indicate that
(24:48):
they have pulled back from the eye popping sums they
raised and spent In twenty twenty, the organization is still
one of the top spending politically oriented nonprofits in the country.
So here's what it has to say about the actual
relationship between Chorus and sixteen thirty. Chorus, which is described
in contracts reviewed by Wired as a project of the
(25:08):
sixteen thirty fund that handles operations for the Creator program
launched in November twenty twenty four with Ties to Good Influence,
a for profit influencer marketing agency aim at helping content
creators connect with social good campaigns. So this is really
kind of all that it says, and I think that
Chorus being a quote project of sixteen thirty could honestly
(25:33):
mean a lot of things. I could pretty easily see
an organization calling themselves a project of their fiscal sponsor.
This is the kind of thing that happens in the
nonprofit space all of the time. I would need to
see more information to be able to say one way
or another, but to me, whether or not sixteen thirty
is a financial backer or fiscal sponsor is critical to
(25:55):
the central argument that is being made in this article,
so it's kind of a shame that we don't know
more specifics about what is going on here. If sixteen
thirty is indeed the fiscal sponsor, I think the entire
premise of the article kind of falls apart. So it
would have been a good thing to clarify and make
super duper clear in this piece. So without knowing more
(26:16):
information myself, it's hard for me to really say much
about this particular piece of it. However, I did use
to work as an online organizer for the Sunlight Foundation,
an organization that was dedicated to government transparency and transparency
around money and politics, so I can sort of speak
to it. Generally. Sixteen thirty is what's known as a
(26:37):
dark money group, a political nonprofit organization usually operating under
what's known as a five oh one C four that
can spend money to influence elections and public policy without
disclosing its donors. But not every five ZHO one C
four is a dark money group. The big piece to
understand here is that what distinguishes a five OHO one
(26:57):
C four from a dark money group is that a
five one four is a social welfare organization. They're allowed
to do a mix of charitable or community work and
political advocacy. Many of them do things that are only
loosely political or not political at all, like community groups,
local civic leagues, or issue based non profits. You can
probably think of some five oh one c fours that
(27:19):
are doing great work, like the Sierra Club or the
leg of Women Voters. So yes, these groups do advocacy
and they do lobbying, but they are not just passed
throughs for anonymous money into election ads like they're known
organizations with visible memberships and transparent public activities. So it
separates these five oh one c fours from traditional dark
(27:40):
money groups is that dark money groups spend significant amounts
of money in elections on things like ads for and
against candidates, voter mobilization, et cetera. They do that while
intentionally going out of their way to keep their donors secret.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
I just want to jump in briefly because I feel
obligated to remind listeners that we, as Americans briefly had
a period when dark money in politics was more severely restricted.
A lot of our listeners, I think might be too
young to remember, but the McCain fine Gold Act of
two thousand and two substantially reduced its impact. There was
this bipartisan agreement that was pretty effective for a few
(28:20):
years at reducing the amount of dark money in politics,
and it was great for democracy for all of eight
years until John Roberts and the Supreme Court pretty much
decimated it in twenty ten. And I think this is
important context for this conversation, even though it hasn't been
the law for the past fifteen years. But I think
it's important to remember that Congress, acting on behalf of
(28:42):
the American people, was like, Nah, this dark money stuff
is no good. We have to get it out of here.
And so they passed a law to outlaw it. But
then the Supreme Court, led by John Roberts, who is
still there today continuing to lead it, essentially just gutted
that law. And so now dark money is everywhere, and
so pretty much any political ad you might see, unless
it's coming directly from a Canada's official campaign, is probably
(29:05):
funded with dark money. It's just everywhere. That's just the
reality that we are living in in America.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Yes, that is important context. I will say it does
get a little bit murky, this distinction between five oh
one c fours and dark money, because it's not one
hundred percent cut and dry. These days. The IRS only
requires that politics not be a five zho one C
fours quote primary activity, but primary is not very curly defined,
(29:33):
so in practice a lot of five oh one C
fours do spend quite heavily on politics without being considered
traditionally dark money groups. This is why people are able
to say, like, oh, if you took money from move On,
you took dark money, and they can say that and
have it be I guess sort of technically a tiny
little bit true, because groups like move On can receive
(29:56):
anonymous donations because they have a C four arm, But
it is at actually mostly not true because they're not
really dark money groups because their political activities are public.
It is a bit nuanced, because I think it goes
to show that whether group is technically a traditional dark
money group or not, it is hard to know the
exact sources of every single dollar when it comes to
(30:17):
these kinds of organizations, even those organizations that are not
technically traditional dark money groups, precisely because there are structures
that those groups can use to obscure it. It's just
not very cut and dry. So I know that's a
little bit in the weeds and wonky. But remember that
distinction because it's going to become important for a claim
that is being personally made against Taylor Lorentz in a moment.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
And Bridget, I just want to commend you for the
clarity of that piece about fiscal sponsors and five oh
one c fours Like, man, I know that is not
your bread and butter talking about that stuff, but you know,
good work getting through it clearly.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Well, that's why That's kind of my thing about this
article is that the actual substance of it is like
wonky and quite boring, and it's not surprising to me
that people are like focusing on something else when the
actual meat of it is comes down to the distinction
between five oh one seed fours and five oh one
seed threes and fiscal sponsors, Like, I understand why people
(31:14):
are like, oh, boring, Let's just attack a bunch of
creators on social media. That's much better.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
More.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
We were talking about what exactly a dark money group is.
I swear I am almost done with this part of
(31:43):
the podcast, but just to wrap it up, the big
piece to understand about all of this is that classic
dark money groups are extremely high dollar, opaque, and most
importantly deliberately structured to mask donor identities while spending very
heavily on election judicial bites and ballot initiatives. So whether
or not sixteen thirty is actually the financial backer, like
(32:06):
Taylo Lorenz says, and the piece or is simply the
fiscal sponsor, essentially lending Chorus its nonprofit status for them
to be able to operate as a nonprofit, I cannot
personally say, but I can say that Taylor Lorenz is
one hundred percent correct here that sixteen thirty is a
dark money group. I wanted to make that point really
really clear, probably too clear, because I have seen something
(32:29):
kind of floating around online basically acting like dark money
is just kind of a bad vibe that Taylor Lorenz
is attaching to certain pasts of money she doesn't like
willy nilly when she is right that it is a
pretty specific thing, like it is the kind of thing
that has special tax forms.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Yeah, it's a real thing.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
And Lorenz's article in Wired says that the contract that
all of these creators signed says that they are not
able to disclose their relationship to Chorus or sixteen thirty.
According to copies of the contract viewed by Wired that
Creators signed, the influencers are not allowed to disclose their
relationship with Chorus or the sixteen thirty one, or functionally
(33:10):
that they are being paid at all. So this piece
is a little bit tricky. First, the article suggests that
they are contractually prevented from disclosing their relationship with Chorus,
but creators online are saying, Hey, I've been talking about
being part of Coorus in my content since I started
up with the cohort. My picture is on the Chorus website.
How could you say that I have not disclosed my
(33:32):
relationship with them and that I've been doing it in secret.
When this has come up on social media, Taylor Lorenz
has pointed out that yes, Creators have not made their
relationship with Chorus a secret, but that they have not
disclosed sixteen thirty's relationship with Chorus, whatever that might be,
and that they are barred from doing so because of
their contract. I get what Lorenz is saying here. I
(33:54):
really do. Financial disclosure is important and there should be
a standard of disclosing financial ties just to keep everything
above board. But if indeed sixteen thirty is the financial
backer of Courus and not just the fiscal sponsor. I
could also see creator saying, well, how far back am
I expected to go to trace and disclose the origin
(34:15):
of where every dollar I get comes from? You know,
I myself got a grant for ten thousand dollars for
some work I was doing several years ago. I could
tell you the name of the organization that I applied
to to get that grant. I could tell you the
name of the organization that was on that check. Could
I tell you every funder and every dollar that funded
that organization that wrote that check. I honestly probably could not.
(34:38):
So I really do see both sides here. Lorenz is
absolutely correct that transparency and disclosure is important and an
ethical thing to do. And 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.
Like how far back am I, as a Chorus creator
(34:58):
expected to go when I'm to closing? And who sets
that standard? It 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 as fair.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Yeah, and so what is the standard, right? And what
are we talking? Are we're talking ethical standards or legal standards.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Well, 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. You 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.
(35:43):
But the FTC's authority is limited to commercial speech, not politics.
Political content falls under the FEC. The Federal Elections Commission,
which mainly requires campaigns and packs to report their spending
to the government, not for influencers to disclose it directly
to their followers in their That means that political influencers
really don't have to add hashtag ad or any kind
(36:05):
of similar tags, even if they're being paid. In the article,
Taylor Lorenz quotes Graham Wilson, a lawyer working with Chorus
from a zoom he did with the creators where he said,
there are some real advantages to housing this program in
a nonprofit. It gives us the ability to raise money
from donors. And also with this structure, it avoids a
lot of the public disclosure of public disclaimers you know,
(36:26):
paid for by blah blah blah that you see on
political ads. We don't need to deal with any of that.
Your names aren't showing up on reports FOD with the FEC.
So this strikes me as not great, and also it
strikes me as the actual substance of the article. Now,
to be clear, Wilson is correct that legally, creators don't
have to disclose their financial relationships with their funders to
(36:49):
their audiences in their content. Legally, no, Ethically, well, that's
a much more complicated story, and I think the actual
question the article raises has been a bit buried, and
that is what ethical obligation to creators have to disclose
what funding they have gotten and when do they have
that obligation? If a creator joins a trading program where
(37:12):
they learn media skills but have creative control over what
they say online, do they still need to disclose funding
for that media trading. This kind of became a flashpoint
because when the article came out, some people were really
trying to attack Taylor Lorenz personally by saying, well, she
herself is in a journalism fellowship funded by Pierre Omitiar,
(37:32):
the billionaire donor who founded eBay. So the question was, well,
why doesn't Taylor Lorenz have to disclose that she is
also taking dark money? The difference here is that Omitir
is not a dark money group traditionally. Again, you could
kind of sort of try to make the argument that
they are because they do have a C four arm,
which technically means that some of its money could be
classified as dark money because those donors don't have to
(37:55):
be disclosed. But Omitir is not a dark money group
in the traditional set because with omdir you generally know
who was behind the money, Piero Midir, and you know
where that money goes. It is not set up to
obscure that fact like a true dark money group like
sixteen thirty is set up. So to me, that is
not really a fair critique of Taylor Lorenz at all.
(38:18):
I think folks, we're trying to make the point that
it actually is sometimes complicated to know where every single
source for every single dollar of your income is coming from.
And then if you're going to be calling out other
people on that, you then kind of have to be
willing for folks to start watching your pockets. And under
a system like capitalism, when you follow the source for
(38:40):
most money that moves around in this country, there might
be stuff in there that, yeah, we don't love. And
I think one of the reasons why people brought this
up as a critique on Taylor Lorenz and the wake
of the article is that, you know, being paid to
make content online, especially leftist content, is hard. Trust me,
the very few people out there are getting rich from
(39:02):
making leftist content on the internet. It is a hustle.
So I get the sense that these creators sort of
feel like they're being pocket washed a little bit, you know,
from you know that phrase pocket watched.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I don't know that phrase, no, but you have my attention.
What does it mean?
Speaker 1 (39:18):
So 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. And it's
not a good feeling. And so my sense is these
creators feel like they are being pocket watched in public,
right now.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Oh, interesting, I had not heard that, but that is
a useful phrase. I've definitely had that sensation of being
pocket watched. Now I have a label for it.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yes, pocket watched. So I do think the ethics of
taking money without disclosing it is a very fair question.
And just because it seems to not be in dispute
that Chorus is not paying creators to say or not
say specific messages, that doesn't mean there is no question
around the ethics of all of this. I think it's
really about trust. I want a world for us where
(40:05):
people are able to trust the massive political platforms that
they follow and have a sense of how and if
money is shaping the kinds of messages we're all seeing
on social media, and I do think that being cagey
about how you're paid probably gets us further from that ideal.
But I also think that this handful of creators didn't
set up this broken, complex system that we're all navigating,
(40:26):
And this, I think is the real meat of the article.
These creators are disclosing that they're members of this cohort,
but according to Lorenz, they are contractually prevented from disclosing
the financial relationship they might have with chorus and sixteen thirty.
And what is tough about this is that I have
no idea whether or not this is true. Lorenz says
(40:47):
that Wired looked at the contract, but it's not reprinted
in the article or anything, because that could potentially reveal
who that contract belongs to if they reprinted it. When
I was gearing up to do this episode, I was
all gung ho to send the contract to my own attorney,
who works on all of my contracts, to get his take.
Shout out to podcast attorney Lindsay. He is like a
(41:07):
certified silly goose and y'all would have loved hearing from him.
But the article doesn't publish any contract or any part
of any contract, so I couldn't even do that. And
that's an issue because the creators are saying, oh, well,
our contract doesn't say this, or they're saying, Taylor Lorenz,
who is not an attorney, is a misunderstanding what our
contract says. So there is a little bit of kind
(41:29):
of trust us in this article because readers cannot see
the contract for themselves. Lorenz has been very vocal on
social media saying that the creators in the cohort should
simply publish their contract if they think that she has
misrepresented it in her piece, and those creators are saying, well,
the burden of proof should be on the person making
the claim or the allegation. Why should I have to
(41:50):
provide my contract to speak to a claim that Taylor made.
So it's essentially a stalemate. So that's one of the
reasons that I can't really speak to the contract part
of this. I would have really liked the opportunity to
check out the contract for myself. I'm certain that Wired's
fact checkers and lawyers reviewed the piece before publishing it,
but I would have liked for it to be spelled
(42:11):
out that a lawyer who specializes in these kind of contracts,
like not just wires general counsel, somebody who is a
contract specialist, read the contract and confirmed that it said
all the things that the article says that it does.
I don't say that to criticize Taylor Lorenz. I just
know that contract legallees can be complex to parse. I
was actually just having a conversation with an attorney about
(42:32):
how attorneys who don't specialize in certain kinds of contracts
don't necessarily have the experience to know what those contracts say, so.
I think the article could have really dis 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. But I also don't
want to make it seem like I'm just dismissing what
(42:55):
Lorenz has brought up here. There are pieces raised in
the article that I think are absolutely worth talking about.
A big one is should dark money groups even exist?
You know, the sixteen thirty Fund is a dark money group,
but even their executive director, Amy Kurtz, has written publicly
about this. In an op ed written after the twenty
twenty four election, she writes, we recognize that our campaign
(43:17):
finance system needs to be changed. Sixteen thirty Fund has
been on the record actively supporting a massive rewrite of
the rules to provide more transparency and disclosure in our elections.
As we prepare to welcome the one hundred and nineteenth Congress,
sixteen thirty Fund will continue to advocate for reform that
restores our faith in our campaign finance system. No matter
where you fall on the ideological spectrum, everybody reaps the
(43:39):
benefits of democracy and transparency. So thanks to citizens United.
Dark money groups are able to have an opaque, unchecked
grip on our democracy. All dark money groups are not
doing nefarious things I can see from looking them up
on open secrets, which is a site that tracks money
in politics that sixteen thirty funds a ton of work
(44:01):
that I think is great and I'm totally ideologically aligned with.
But maybe we still shouldn't have a democracy that can
be controlled financially by forces that the public does not
really get to know about, even if they're doing it
along ideological lines that I personally agree with.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Yes, it's a good point, but also we shouldn't have
a democracy helmed by a fascist, narcissistic, pervert weirdo.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
But here we are, Yes, here we are. More after
a quick break, let's get right back into it. Well,
(44:48):
that really brings me to one of the pieces raised
in the piece that we have talked about quite a
bit on the show, which is how democrats can compete
with the vast shadowy creator and media ecosystem on the right.
We 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
(45:10):
wing organization, and 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. So 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, because when it comes down to dominating
(45:33):
the media ecosystem, it seems like folks on the left
are bringing a tote bag of books to a gunfight.
There has been so much talk of meeting the Joe
Rogan of the left, and a lot of the reaction
to Lorenz's piece has been people saying, while if folks
on the right are doing it, folks on the left
need to catch up, and we can't really do that
if it's going to be criticized and demonized like this
(45:54):
when we do it. Honestly, I don't really have the
answer here. I care quite a lot about transparentarancy in
government and politics. I think that people should have information
about whose money and what money drives our government and
our politics and our democracy. And sure I don't want
Dems to be unable to make use of the same
tactics that the right is kicking their ass with. But
(46:15):
I also don't like the idea of a government dominated
by big money with no transparency. Essentially, it is one
thing to say dark money groups should not exist. It
is another to say dark money groups exist, but only
the right should use them to further their ideology. Because
the right is really using them to further their ideology.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
They are really using them, and they are really using
them effectively. It 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.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Well. 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 personality like Tim Poole
were being paid by Russia to make content. The Wired
piece reads the structure of the program highlights the vast
(47:08):
differences between how Democrats and Republicans attempt to amass online influence.
Republicans have spent decades of building up a powerful independent
media ecosystem, though the right wing influencer world is far
from transparent. In September twenty twenty four, a federal indictment
alleged the Russian state sponsored network RT was covertly providing
millions in funding to Tenant Media, a company working with
(47:30):
major rightling influencers including Benny Johnson, Timpole, Dave Ruben, and
Lauren Southern.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
That story is so unbelievable. I can't believe it wasn't
a bigger deal. If we lived in a sane country,
there would have been intense fallout from that. There would
have been outrage all around, people still be talking about
It would have been like a historical violation of national security.
New laws would have been created to outlaw that very
(47:57):
specific method for foreign countries to influence in US elections.
But we did nothing. Absolutely nothing changed. And that's the
media environment we live in, so, you know, And it's
been like this since the Supreme Court gutted McCain fine
Gold fifteen years ago. And so I also love transparency
and think we should have so more of it, But
(48:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yes, 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.
I really hate that the resounding fallout has been around
(48:52):
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. And you know, it's
not like these creators wrote the Chorus contract themselves. In fact,
the piece includes text messages from a group chat where
the creators are pretty clearly not thrilled about a lot
(49:12):
of the contract. It 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. You 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
(49:32):
major major red flag for me personally. I would never
agree to an exploding offer. If 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.
That is not an offer that I want to sign. Personally.
I 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. You know, in this game,
(49:56):
everything is negotiable, and especially as somebody who doesn't make
a ton of money any one thing, I do the
ability to look at a contract and say, well, can
we change this? Can we change that? Like when you're
not making a ton of money, sometimes that's the only
real power or currency you have. And so personally it
does sound like to me Chorus is operating under some
shady contract dynamics. But now these creators are essentially being
(50:21):
held to account for the details of this contract that
they did not write. When I think the real entity
on trial here should be the people who work the
contract and our campaign finance system that allows for this
kind of thing to be legal. Like, don't hate the player,
hate the game.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
Yeah, and there's plenty to hate in the game of
American campaign finance. There's plenty to hate there. But you're right,
that doesn't really seem to be Like at the center
of the online controversy. The online controversy that has been
sustained for ten days now, which is longer than the
most news stories. It has seemed like pretty personal about
(51:00):
the specific creators, about Taylor Lrenz herself. And so it
is interesting that the Tenant media case where a bunch
of right wing influencers were caught taking money from Russia
to promote pro Russian points got comparatively so little attention
compared to this story about a handful of left leaning influencers.
Speaker 1 (51:20):
Yes, and I would say that if I had any
kind of big point about this whole thing is that
I think that how we talk about this stuff online
is completely broken. First of all, that article, I'll just say,
in my opinion, it is no short read. I read it,
you read it. This is gonna be where you're like, oh,
(51:41):
I regularly read ten thousand word articles all the time.
It's for fun. It's like, would you categorize it as
a long read?
Speaker 2 (51:47):
It was a long read. It was a long article.
I wouldn't say that it was like redundant or the like. Oh,
obviously they should have cut this, this and that, But
it was a long article. I just you know, kept
reading and reading, and there was more to read. There
is a lot to it, and so yeah, I do
wonder how many people have, like, actually sat down and
(52:10):
read the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (52:11):
I would wager to guess that a lot of people
commenting on the article on social media have not actually
read the whole thing. They are going from what the
social media chatter has been about it online. Even after
listening to this episode, I do think that people should
read the article for themselves and make up their own
minds about it, because, you know, don't take my word
for it. Read the article yourself. But as somebody who
(52:32):
has read the article several times and knows a little
bit about some of the issues that it raises, I
can tell you the online chatter about the piece has
really misrepresented it, regardless of where you fall on the
spectrum of agreeing with the piece or not agreeing with
the piece. I saw people say, oh, this article explains
why all the progressive influencers and creators all started fawning
(52:56):
over Gavin Newsome at the same time. But the article
never said is that that creators were paid to post
specific messages or content online. I 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. Like, those are specific
(53:16):
things that have specific meaning, and they have not happened
in this article. But 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
(53:38):
thing happening. You 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.
Now that very well may be true, but this article
does not paint that portrait at all in any specific way,
(53:58):
And I get why read it 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. Like,
who would want to focus on the difference between five
oh one C threes and five oh one C four
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, I
(54:21):
get it. I think the article can be interpreted in
such a way that 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.
I think that's why it has caused such a stir online.
The article has given people carte blanche to project their
(54:41):
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. So
to me, this piece is not really about individual creators
and whether they're good or bad, or shills or whatever.
It is about the big system. We all live in
(55:01):
a campaign finance system that lets billions of dollars move
through politics without much transparency. Whether it's Chorus sixteen thirty
fun or the right wing media machine, money in politics
shapes the information we all see online, and until that changes,
we're going to keep running into stories like this one.
That's why I think the real question isn't which influencer
(55:22):
got paid what, but how do we build a media
and political ecosystem that people can actually trust. Who do
we trust to shape our politics? And what happens when
even good creators get pulled into systems designed to obscure
power instead of revealing it. We can't get caught in
the weeds of internet drama and miss the bigger story
how money disclosed or not shapes the future we are
(55:45):
all living in. So that is my attempt at summarizing
what is going on with this article and some of
the responses to it online. I would love to hear
what folks think. This was not an easy one. I
spent quite a lot of time doing having a big
think and putting my thoughts together. So I want to
hear what folks think about this article. If you read it,
(56:06):
if you follow the reaction, what are your thoughts? Feel
free to disagree with me, That's always welcome. I really
want to know. How can folks get in touch producer Mike.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
People can send an email to share their thoughts to
Hello at tangoty dot com. They can leave comments on Spotify,
although for this one, I don't know. Maybe maybe an
email might get a little tweaky for the casual listener
in the future, who might be scrolling. But you know,
if that's where you want to leave your comments, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (56:33):
I read all the Spotify comments personally. It's my favorite
mechanism of commenting. Yeah, there's a lot of comments on
there now. People seem to really enjoy commenting there, which
makes sense. You're already there listening to the podcast anyway. Yeah.
I hate email, and so if you send an email,
it's like a crapshoot of whether I will read it
or Mike will read it, or Mike will read it
(56:53):
and forward it to me. I find the Spotify comments
to be a much more pleasing space. I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (57:01):
Oh, I didn't know you felt this way, but yes,
Spotify comments, all right, that's where it's at for you.
And then you can also find Bridget on social She's
on Instagram, Bridget Marie in DC. Same for TikTok, and
you can find there are no girls on the Internet
on YouTube, but you probably won't find a click from
(57:23):
this episode.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
I love that. It's like, wait, are we now the
Shadowy Organization, the Secret Shoes? I mean, this is this
is this is my personal opinions for you. Me and
are good friends listening? Keep it between you and me.
Speaker 2 (57:42):
Yeah, just the listeners. The video people will give them
something else, but they don't need to be part of this.
They don't want to hear about pass through organizations or
fiscal sponsors.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
Yeah, they're notably disinterested in campaign finance. Well, thanks so
much for listening, y'all. I will see you on the interhead.
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi, You can reach us at
Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
(58:13):
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland
is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
(58:35):
get your podcasts.
Hi, this is Future Bridget. We did a whole, very
detailed episode breaking down the controversy about how political content
creators in a program called Chorus are paid, and I
realized after that episode was recorded that I did not
make it explicitly clear that I am not connected to
Chorus in any capacity. I am not on their payroll.
(00:21):
I am not a Chorus member. By way of my
own financial disclosures for the last year, the majority of
my income has come from my various podcast gigs and
a few speaking training gigs, and I just wanted to
make that clear. Okay, here's the episode There Are No
(00:41):
Girls on the Internet, as a production of iHeartRadio and
Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are
No Girls on the Internet. Last week, journalist Taylor Lerenz
published a piece in Wired called a dark money group
is secretly funding high profile democratic influencers. The article blew
(01:06):
up on social media, namely on threads, and here to
talk through it with me is producer Mike. Mike, thank
you for being here.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Happy to be here, Thanks for inviting me. This is
continuing to be a pretty big story, and I know
it's something that you have been spending a lot of
time thinking about and so I'm excited to hear what
you've got to say, Bridget.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Well, before we get into the weeds, let me set
the stakes here a little bit, because this is not
just some influencer drama unfolding on social media. The steaks
are very real. This is about money and how it
shapes what we see online. But still, the conversation about
Taylor Lorenzo's article very quickly shifted from that bigger picture
(01:48):
into a lot of stuff that I have to be honest,
I was not super excited to be waiting into I
actually was kind of trying to stay out of this
whole thing. But you know what, I guess I'm waiting
into it.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Wish me luck, Yeah, good luck, Bridget good luck out
there in here, everywhere, good luck everywhere. Why are you
so interested in staying out of it? Is seems like this,
you know, tech politics, this is your beat, No, it
is my beat.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I feel I would be remiss to not mention that
this particular article has become something of a battleground for
what seems like litigating a lot of grievances. There have
been lots of personal attacks flying on social media in
the wake of this article, and honestly, it just is
not the kind of thing I'm super interested in or
(02:40):
comfortable waiting into. Like as much as I love talking
about the Internet and talking about what's unfolded on social media,
I don't love getting mixed up in this level of
back and forth as it happens. In my opinion, it's
like a little bit harder to thoughtfully talk about Internet
drama internet disputes if you are also super mixed up
(03:00):
in them. So generally speaking, I try to stay out
of that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
You know, something that I've always admired slash marveled about
with you is the way that you are really tuned
into these conversations in a way like much closer than
I am, like multiple orders of magnitude more closely than
I am. But still you're not actually part of what's
happening online. Sometimes you're not getting caught up in I
(03:29):
guess that the Internet drama, Mike.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
This article came out on August twenty seventh, and currently
right now, as of today, September seventh, the fallout and
back and forth on social media is ongoing. It's still
happening as we speak. That is like ten days of
internet drama, basically the Coachella of Internet drama. I know
(03:51):
myself and I know that I simply do not have
the stamina to be involved.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Ten days is a crazy long time for anything to
be news. Like Trump like blew up some civilians off
the coast of Venezuela last week, and we've already moved
on from talking about it.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, that ten ten days is staying power. So all
of that to say, I'm going to try to keep
this conversation really focused on the substance of the article,
not the ongoing social media fallout. Maybe we could do
a follow up episode about the social media conversation the
article generated, because it has been a lot. If you're
listening and you want to know what's going on with that,
(04:29):
just check threads. It will be very clear what's happening.
Just check threads. But I'm going to try to be
as fair as possible, stick to discussing the facts of
the article, and where something is my opinion, I'll try
to let y'all know.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
All right, bridget so what is in this article?
Speaker 1 (04:45):
So 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, the highest end of
the tier being eight thousand dollars a month, the lowest
end of the tier being two one hundred and fifty
dollars a month.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Okay, and so in this program, what are these influencers
getting paid for?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
It sounds to me like a training program or a
fellowship on 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. The creators say that they are paid to
attend these meetings and trainings, which is pretty typical of
a fellowship. Here's a bit from the frequently asked questions
on the Chorus website question will I be paid to
(05:29):
make content? Answer? Nope. Coorus is a creator led, nonpartisan
nonprofit with a really different model in the creator space.
We don't pay creators to produce content. We just give
you the space to learn about how to communicate effectively
and grow your platforms. In other words, creators are free
to post what they want when they want. This includes
their affiliation with Chorus. I should say that I don't
(05:50):
know when this information was added to their website. So essentially,
this article says that these high profile progressive creators with
millions of followers signed on to this restrict of contract
with Chorus that puts restrictions on what they can talk about,
how they can engage with Leston officials, and forbid them
from disclosing any of the finances around it publicly. A
(06:11):
piece that does not seem to be in dispute here
is that this is in no way the kind of
program where Coorus is paying creators to push specific talking
points or messaging or make specific posts. All parties seem
to agree there, but I am going to try to
sketch out some of the pieces that are in dispute here.
The first is whether or not creators, by signing a
(06:32):
contract with Chorus, are handing Chorus control over how they
are able to connect with elected officials. A lot of
the contact creators in this cohort have been regularly interviewing
and speaking to elected officials on their platforms, which I
know is kind of a big deal if you're an
independent creator and not affiliated with a larger news network
or agency. Right like having a big name political figure
(06:54):
on your Instagram or on your TikTok to do an
interview is a big deal, and I think the implicate
in the article is that Chorus could be trying to
control how creators signed to the program deal with elets
of officials. If I'm able to book an interview with
let's say, Kamala Harris on my own, the piece argues
that I would still have to funnel that interview through
(07:16):
Chorus to not be in breach of my contract. The
piece includes this bit that includes a quote from a
creator who declined to participate in the program. Many creators
expressed concerns about some of the stipulations. According to copies
of the contract viewed by Wired, creators in the program
must funnel all bookings with lawmakers and political leaders through Chorus.
Creators also have to loop Chorus in on any independently
(07:39):
organized engagements with government officials or political leaders. If I
want to work with another politician, I have to fully
collaborate with them, said one creator who was offered the
contract but ultimately declined to take it and asked not
to be named. If I get Zoron and he wants
to do an interview with me, I don't want to
give that to them. So some creators pushed back on
this claim on social media and have said that not
(08:01):
only does Chorus not require them to book all their
interviews with electeds through Chorus, that even this implication, you
know that they can't use their own hard won lists
of contacts on relationships to book their own interviews was insulting.
And in a follow up interview with popular live streamer
and sex pest Destiny whose real name is Stephen Bondell,
(08:22):
who yes, if you know about Destiny, just know that
I have thoughts about him, but I am going to
try to stay focused here, Taylor Lorenz clarifies in an
interview with Destiny just a heads up, it's kind of
an urally unpleasant clip.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
That funnel like heavily implies that you the way that
the article is written is that Chorus can block you
from doing your own independent media.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
I guess we don't make that claim in this story,
and I'm sorry if the word funnel sort of implied
that to you, but we don't make that claim. So, Stephen,
you brought something up that I think.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Is an one more one more quickly and then you're okay.
You said okay, because I don't know why, because you
use loop Chorus in on the next sentence, why not
just say loop in, because I've never my life heard funnel.
Funnel always means you're handing the reins over to somebody else, right,
like we.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
Are using their program to book it.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
But sure you.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Could also book it on your own, right, because the
next sentence you have is that you can look any
independent organizing them in. Yeah, right, but loop in is
not funnel.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Those are two really.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Different things, right, Okay, okay, so.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Two really different things to loop somebody.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
In personally, don't interpret it that way, but if you
want to interpret it that way, you're welcome to interpret
it that way.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
I wanted to include this clip because I think it
illustrates very well a bit of what I suspect is
happening here. Parts of the article are written in such
a way that, in my opinion, could probably lead a
reasonable reader to think that something more nefarious than what
is actually being described is happening. Because when I read
(10:01):
that bit, I thought, oh, it sounds like Chorus is
controlling how these creators can connect with elected officials. But
in that follow up interview that Lorenz did with Destiny
that we just heard, it actually sounds like she's not
saying that at all. It sounds like Taylor is actually
saying these creators can book interviews with elected officials through Chorus,
or they can book interviews with elected officials on their
(10:23):
own independently, as they've always been doing, just as long
as they give Coorus a heads up. So Lorenz is
correct that the article never flat out explicitly says creators
contracts gives Chorus control over what elected officials they can
and can't speak to you at about what and how.
But then my question would be, then what is meant
to be the takeaway from even including that bit if
(10:44):
really it is just a standard humdrum provision that like, oh,
creators are basically free to do whatever they want when
it comes to booking interviews, just give us a heads up. So,
in my opinion, there are pieces of the article that,
inadvertently or not are leading to the impression that something
more nefarious is going on than what is actually stated
to be happening. And that sort of nefarious yet unstated
(11:08):
implication is the thing being litigated on social media, not
what the article actually says is going on.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
That makes a lot of sense, because you know, I've
read through this article and it does give one the
sense that something the farious is happening. But 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 course, but then the
(11:37):
next sentence says that actually they don't need to do that,
And so it's not even just the word funnel, but
it's like the words around it, you know, must funnel
all bookings. It really strongly implies something that is then
contradicted in the next sentence. And yeah, to your point, like,
what are we meant to take away from that, Like
all bookings must be funneled except for the ones that aren't.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, creators must funnel all bookings through chorus unless they
don't want to, then just give them a heads up.
I genuinely don't know what we as the audience are
meant to take away from that. So it's not clear
to me why it's included. And this is just one
specific piece that stood out to me, But there's more
stuff like this throughout the piece that we'll talk more about.
(12:20):
Let's take a quick break at our back. I think
probably the biggest piece in dispute, and kind of the
crux of why I think this article blew up on
(12:41):
social media the way that it did is the question
of whether or not the Chorus contract restricts what kind
of issues creators can speak on. Here's an example of
what I mean. The piece reads that the contracts placed
quote restrictions on what sort of political content the creators
can produce. But the only specific exam that the article
mentions of the contract stipulating what kind of political issues
(13:04):
creators in the program can speak to is a clause
quote prohibiting the disparagement of other creators. Not being able
to criticize anyone else affiliated with Chorus felt restrictive to some,
according to text messages posted to the chat. So maybe
there's more to it than that. But if that's the case,
it is certainly not mentioned in any kind of specific
(13:24):
way in this article. And when one of the creators
in the cohort, Aaron Parness, pointed out on social media
that the creators were not being paid to create specific
content or specific messaging, Lorenz says that he is correct,
saying Aaron is correct that Chorus didn't pay them to
post specific content. But I do think that the contract
was unethical in how it banned disclosures. So I think
(13:48):
this is a big piece of what's going on here
and why this article touched a nerve in my opinion.
The article seems to suggest, without outright saying it, that
progressive influencers are being paid by dark money to say
or not say certain things about certain political issues. But
then the article doesn't really ever actually illustrate any of
(14:11):
that in any kind of specific way beyond saying that
the creators are not allowed to criticize other creators in
the cohort. But then when you check out the conversation
on social media about the article, you have people saying
things like, oh, well, this explains why big progressive creators
were silent on Gaza, because they were being paid not
to talk about it. But to be clear, the piece
(14:31):
itself never outright says this, but that is clearly the
way it was interpreted by a ton of people online,
to the point where some of the creators in the
program started posting receipts of them publicly talking about Gaza
and their content. Some of the creators in the program
have been very vocal about the issue, and some of
them haven't Lorenz even did a bit of this herself
(14:52):
in an at Times he did exchange with Elizabeth Booker,
a black woman attorney and public health professional and content
who is in Chorus. Lawrenz spoke directly to her, saying, Hi, Elizabeth,
how many creators in the sixteen thirty fund dark money
scheme have used their platform to fight against the Zionist
apartheid and speak aut against the genocide and Gaza. Out
(15:14):
of the ninety creators, it seems like you can only
point to Heidi and Ali, whom was included in the
program after siding with you in an online controversy. How
many of the other of those ninety influencers are calling
out Zionism? Are you some? First? I have followed Elizabeth
Booker and I can say that she has spoken out
about Gaza. But to be honest, this post from Taylor
(15:36):
kind of confused me, because if Taylor Lorenz agrees that
Chorus is not controlling, what kind of contact the Cohort
can post? I don't understand what she is trying to
imply here. Is she saying that Chorus actually is preventing
members of the Cohort from speaking out about Palestine? Then
how come as she points out in this post, some
of the cohort has been able to be very vocal
(15:58):
about it, Like I genuinely don't understand the implication here
and I don't really have an answer for what's going on.
And if these influencers are being paid to not talk
about Gaza, that would be a huge story. But it
seems like Lorenz isn't saying that that's what's going on here,
but it's also kind of acting as if that's what's
(16:20):
going on here. So 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. That's kind of what I mean.
And a bit of a side note about this, I
have what I will own might be a bit of
an unpopular opinion about this. Something that I find really
(16:43):
interesting is how the genocidem Gaza online has become kind
of a litmus test to keep track of who said
what and when right. There is absolutely reason to side
eye people with huge platforms who have not been using
those platforms to speak up about Gaza. But to me,
sometimes online it can sort of turn into a way
(17:03):
to datcha people to prove that they aren't just progressive
or something. And I just sort of don't like the
idea of a genuine genocide that is killing people children
being turned into a way to win an online argument
or score points on social media. And the fact that
some of this response to the article has turned into
these creators essentially having to prove that they were not
(17:26):
paid by the Democrats to be silent on Gaza, even
though the article never specifically even alleges that to be
the case, I think just shows how reductive some of
the conversation online has gotten. And to me that reveals
another point. The article itself never says this whole thing
is connected to the Democratic Party, but I can see
how readers would walk away with that impression.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah, me too, you know, I think even though the
article is explicitly say it, the implication is clear that
there's this effort by powerful forces on the left to
control the left, even though, as you said, it isn't
explicitly stated in the article. But the vagary is a
feature of it, not a bug. And then people can
project whatever worldview they have onto that vagary.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. You know.
The piece calls the creators in the program democratic political influencers,
and some of them do have documented relationships with the
Democratic Party, things like attending the Democratic National Convention as
a contact creator, which full disclosure, I also attended the
Democratic National Convention as a content creator. I was not paid,
(18:35):
not by a long shot. I actually paid several hundreds
of dollars out of my own pocket to go to
the Democratic National Convention as a contact creator. I actually
have been kind of meaning to make an episode about
what that experience was. Like, I'm still sort of wrestling
with whether or not this would actually be interesting for
anyone to listen to or not. You know, it was
(18:57):
the Democratic Party's inaugural class of kind of influencers contact creators,
sending them to the Democratic National Convention the same way
that you would send other journalists. Well, I've attended both
the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention as
a traditional journalist and as part of this like cohort
of contact creators influencers. I don't know, maybe I'll make
(19:19):
an episode about that, but the main thing that I
took away from that experience was that and I mean
no shape to contact creators because I respect them, and
I in some ways I think I am adjacent to
contact creators. But going to the DNC as part of
a cohort of contact creators really illustrated to me that
I am not a contact creator. Like I don't know
exactly what I am, but I know that I am
(19:41):
something else, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I have been after you to make that episode since
you came back because I thought what you had to
say was pretty interesting and I suspect listeners would too.
And so listeners, if you want Bridget to talk about it,
send us an email hello to tangyote dot com.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
I mean, I gotta stay focused on this, but we
can make we can make that episode. We can make
that episode.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
I found it interesting.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
So the piece just sort of lumps all of these
creators as being in with the Democratic Party in a
way that kind of suggests that they are essentially paid
mouthpieces for the Democratic Party on social media. Consider the
subhead of the article, which reads, an initiative aimed at
boosting Democrats online offers influencers up to eight thousand dollars
(20:26):
a month to push the party line. But when one
of the creators in the cohort asked Taylor Lorenz on
Threads what evidence that she had that these creators were
being paid specifically to push democratic messaging online like the
subhead says, she said, quote, I hear you on the feedback.
Reporters don't write subheadings. Horus was always public, but the
funding was not. I do think that funding sources across
(20:49):
the political spectrum should be disclosed. Transparency is good. So again,
it kind of sounds like what Lorenz is repeating is
that the whole thing is about financial disclosure, not how
much is being used to control what influencers can and
can't say online, Which makes the fact that all of
the dust that has been kicked up around this article
is really about whether or not these creators are essentially
(21:11):
paid shills for the Democratic Party really curious to me,
Which brings me to my biggest and most complicated, and
to be honest, probably most boring dispute raised in the piece,
which is exactly who is funding Chorus and is that
funding being properly disclosed? So who is funding Chorus? Well,
this is from Chorus's website. Chorus is a five h
(21:33):
one c four nonprofit organization with grassroots support from over
five thousand individuals since launching in December twenty twenty four.
We'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.
But the Wired article names the sixteen thirty fund as
(21:54):
Chorus's donor. I will say right now that the relationship
between sixteen thirty and Chorus is a little bit unclear
to me. The article does not give, as far as
I can tell, any evidence to confirm that sixteen thirty
is actually the entity funding the cash that then goes
to pay creators. To be clear, it is entirely possible
(22:15):
that that is the case. I 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,
this is a little bit wonky. But I have seen
folks say that sixteen thirty is not actually Coorus's funder,
in the sense that it is not providing money to Chorus,
you know, the money that then goes to pay the creators.
(22:36):
But that sixteen thirty is actually Coorus's fiscal sponsor. A
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.
This is a totally commonplace occurrence in the nonprofit world,
(22:57):
so I sometimes do trainings on how to spot things
like medium manipulation and disinformation online. If I wanted to
continue doing that work as a nonprofit and try to
get grant funding to support it, I could either one
go through the very complicated process of setting up my
own nonprofit for myself, or two, I could find another
(23:19):
organization that is already a nonprofit and they could act
as my fiscal sponsor so that I could do that
work under their nonprofit umbrella and be eligible for grant
funding to do it. So I don't know if this
is the kind of arrangement that Chorus does have with
sixteen thirty. Here's what the article says about the sixteen
thirty Fund and Corrus's relationship with them. In twenty eighteen,
(23:41):
the sixteen thirty Fund provided one hundred and forty one
million dollars to more than one hundred left leading causes
in order to bolster democratic support during the midterms. According
to a tax filing of pain by Politico in twenty twenty,
the fund distributed more than four hundred million dollars according
to the organization's public tax filing, which Politico said was
used in efforts to unseat then President Donald Trump and
(24:02):
Republicans Senate majority. In twenty twenty two, sixteen thirty Fund
spent one hundred and ninety six million dollars backing state
ballot measures on abortion rights heading into midterms. According to NBC,
just four donors accounted for close to two thirds of
the funds revenue in twenty twenty three. According to its
tax filings, the major donor group gave fifty point five
million dollars, with others donating thirty one point four million dollars,
(24:25):
twenty one point eight million dollars, and thirteen point six
million dollars. The sixteen thirty Fund, which is not required
to disclose its contributors, has for years been a major
funding source for liberal and progressive causes in 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. Though their recent tax returns indicate that
(24:48):
they have pulled back from the eye popping sums they
raised and spent In twenty twenty, the organization is still
one of the top spending politically oriented nonprofits in the country.
So here's what it has to say about the actual
relationship between Chorus and sixteen thirty. Chorus, which is described
in contracts reviewed by Wired as a project of the
(25:08):
sixteen thirty fund that handles operations for the Creator program
launched in November twenty twenty four with Ties to Good Influence,
a for profit influencer marketing agency aim at helping content
creators connect with social good campaigns. So this is really
kind of all that it says, and I think that
Chorus being a quote project of sixteen thirty could honestly
(25:33):
mean a lot of things. I could pretty easily see
an organization calling themselves a project of their fiscal sponsor.
This is the kind of thing that happens in the
nonprofit space all of the time. I would need to
see more information to be able to say one way
or another, but to me, whether or not sixteen thirty
is a financial backer or fiscal sponsor is critical to
(25:55):
the central argument that is being made in this article,
so it's kind of a shame that we don't know
more specifics about what is going on here. If sixteen
thirty is indeed the fiscal sponsor, I think the entire
premise of the article kind of falls apart. So it
would have been a good thing to clarify and make
super duper clear in this piece. So without knowing more
(26:16):
information myself, it's hard for me to really say much
about this particular piece of it. However, I did use
to work as an online organizer for the Sunlight Foundation,
an organization that was dedicated to government transparency and transparency
around money and politics, so I can sort of speak
to it. Generally. Sixteen thirty is what's known as a
(26:37):
dark money group, a political nonprofit organization usually operating under
what's known as a five oh one C four that
can spend money to influence elections and public policy without
disclosing its donors. But not every five ZHO one C
four is a dark money group. The big piece to
understand here is that what distinguishes a five OHO one
(26:57):
C four from a dark money group is that a
five one four is a social welfare organization. They're allowed
to do a mix of charitable or community work and
political advocacy. Many of them do things that are only
loosely political or not political at all, like community groups,
local civic leagues, or issue based non profits. You can
probably think of some five oh one c fours that
(27:19):
are doing great work, like the Sierra Club or the
leg of Women Voters. So yes, these groups do advocacy
and they do lobbying, but they are not just passed
throughs for anonymous money into election ads like they're known
organizations with visible memberships and transparent public activities. So it
separates these five oh one c fours from traditional dark
(27:40):
money groups is that dark money groups spend significant amounts
of money in elections on things like ads for and
against candidates, voter mobilization, et cetera. They do that while
intentionally going out of their way to keep their donors secret.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
I just want to jump in briefly because I feel
obligated to remind listeners that we, as Americans briefly had
a period when dark money in politics was more severely restricted.
A lot of our listeners, I think might be too
young to remember, but the McCain fine Gold Act of
two thousand and two substantially reduced its impact. There was
this bipartisan agreement that was pretty effective for a few
(28:20):
years at reducing the amount of dark money in politics,
and it was great for democracy for all of eight
years until John Roberts and the Supreme Court pretty much
decimated it in twenty ten. And I think this is
important context for this conversation, even though it hasn't been
the law for the past fifteen years. But I think
it's important to remember that Congress, acting on behalf of
(28:42):
the American people, was like, Nah, this dark money stuff
is no good. We have to get it out of here.
And so they passed a law to outlaw it. But
then the Supreme Court, led by John Roberts, who is
still there today continuing to lead it, essentially just gutted
that law. And so now dark money is everywhere, and
so pretty much any political ad you might see, unless
it's coming directly from a Canada's official campaign, is probably
(29:05):
funded with dark money. It's just everywhere. That's just the
reality that we are living in in America.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Yes, that is important context. I will say it does
get a little bit murky, this distinction between five oh
one c fours and dark money, because it's not one
hundred percent cut and dry. These days. The IRS only
requires that politics not be a five zho one C
fours quote primary activity, but primary is not very curly defined,
(29:33):
so in practice a lot of five oh one C
fours do spend quite heavily on politics without being considered
traditionally dark money groups. This is why people are able
to say, like, oh, if you took money from move On,
you took dark money, and they can say that and
have it be I guess sort of technically a tiny
little bit true, because groups like move On can receive
(29:56):
anonymous donations because they have a C four arm, But
it is at actually mostly not true because they're not
really dark money groups because their political activities are public.
It is a bit nuanced, because I think it goes
to show that whether group is technically a traditional dark
money group or not, it is hard to know the
exact sources of every single dollar when it comes to
(30:17):
these kinds of organizations, even those organizations that are not
technically traditional dark money groups, precisely because there are structures
that those groups can use to obscure it. It's just
not very cut and dry. So I know that's a
little bit in the weeds and wonky. But remember that
distinction because it's going to become important for a claim
that is being personally made against Taylor Lorentz in a moment.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
And Bridget, I just want to commend you for the
clarity of that piece about fiscal sponsors and five oh
one c fours Like, man, I know that is not
your bread and butter talking about that stuff, but you know,
good work getting through it clearly.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Well, that's why That's kind of my thing about this
article is that the actual substance of it is like
wonky and quite boring, and it's not surprising to me
that people are like focusing on something else when the
actual meat of it is comes down to the distinction
between five oh one seed fours and five oh one
seed threes and fiscal sponsors, Like, I understand why people
(31:14):
are like, oh, boring, Let's just attack a bunch of
creators on social media. That's much better.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
More.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
We were talking about what exactly a dark money group is.
I swear I am almost done with this part of
(31:43):
the podcast, but just to wrap it up, the big
piece to understand about all of this is that classic
dark money groups are extremely high dollar, opaque, and most
importantly deliberately structured to mask donor identities while spending very
heavily on election judicial bites and ballot initiatives. So whether
or not sixteen thirty is actually the financial backer, like
(32:06):
Taylo Lorenz says, and the piece or is simply the
fiscal sponsor, essentially lending Chorus its nonprofit status for them
to be able to operate as a nonprofit, I cannot
personally say, but I can say that Taylor Lorenz is
one hundred percent correct here that sixteen thirty is a
dark money group. I wanted to make that point really
really clear, probably too clear, because I have seen something
(32:29):
kind of floating around online basically acting like dark money
is just kind of a bad vibe that Taylor Lorenz
is attaching to certain pasts of money she doesn't like
willy nilly when she is right that it is a
pretty specific thing, like it is the kind of thing
that has special tax forms.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Yeah, it's a real thing.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
And Lorenz's article in Wired says that the contract that
all of these creators signed says that they are not
able to disclose their relationship to Chorus or sixteen thirty.
According to copies of the contract viewed by Wired that
Creators signed, the influencers are not allowed to disclose their
relationship with Chorus or the sixteen thirty one, or functionally
(33:10):
that they are being paid at all. So this piece
is a little bit tricky. First, the article suggests that
they are contractually prevented from disclosing their relationship with Chorus,
but creators online are saying, Hey, I've been talking about
being part of Coorus in my content since I started
up with the cohort. My picture is on the Chorus website.
How could you say that I have not disclosed my
(33:32):
relationship with them and that I've been doing it in secret.
When this has come up on social media, Taylor Lorenz
has pointed out that yes, Creators have not made their
relationship with Chorus a secret, but that they have not
disclosed sixteen thirty's relationship with Chorus, whatever that might be,
and that they are barred from doing so because of
their contract. I get what Lorenz is saying here. I
(33:54):
really do. Financial disclosure is important and there should be
a standard of disclosing financial ties just to keep everything
above board. But if indeed sixteen thirty is the financial
backer of Courus and not just the fiscal sponsor. I
could also see creator saying, well, how far back am
I expected to go to trace and disclose the origin
(34:15):
of where every dollar I get comes from? You know,
I myself got a grant for ten thousand dollars for
some work I was doing several years ago. I could
tell you the name of the organization that I applied
to to get that grant. I could tell you the
name of the organization that was on that check. Could
I tell you every funder and every dollar that funded
that organization that wrote that check. I honestly probably could not.
(34:38):
So I really do see both sides here. Lorenz is
absolutely correct that transparency and disclosure is important and an
ethical thing to do. And 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.
Like how far back am I, as a Chorus creator
(34:58):
expected to go when I'm to closing? And who sets
that standard? It 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 as fair.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Yeah, and so what is the standard, right? And what
are we talking? Are we're talking ethical standards or legal standards.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Well, 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. You 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.
(35:43):
But the FTC's authority is limited to commercial speech, not politics.
Political content falls under the FEC. The Federal Elections Commission,
which mainly requires campaigns and packs to report their spending
to the government, not for influencers to disclose it directly
to their followers in their That means that political influencers
really don't have to add hashtag ad or any kind
(36:05):
of similar tags, even if they're being paid. In the article,
Taylor Lorenz quotes Graham Wilson, a lawyer working with Chorus
from a zoom he did with the creators where he said,
there are some real advantages to housing this program in
a nonprofit. It gives us the ability to raise money
from donors. And also with this structure, it avoids a
lot of the public disclosure of public disclaimers you know,
(36:26):
paid for by blah blah blah that you see on
political ads. We don't need to deal with any of that.
Your names aren't showing up on reports FOD with the FEC.
So this strikes me as not great, and also it
strikes me as the actual substance of the article. Now,
to be clear, Wilson is correct that legally, creators don't
have to disclose their financial relationships with their funders to
(36:49):
their audiences in their content. Legally, no, Ethically, well, that's
a much more complicated story, and I think the actual
question the article raises has been a bit buried, and
that is what ethical obligation to creators have to disclose
what funding they have gotten and when do they have
that obligation? If a creator joins a trading program where
(37:12):
they learn media skills but have creative control over what
they say online, do they still need to disclose funding
for that media trading. This kind of became a flashpoint
because when the article came out, some people were really
trying to attack Taylor Lorenz personally by saying, well, she
herself is in a journalism fellowship funded by Pierre Omitiar,
(37:32):
the billionaire donor who founded eBay. So the question was, well,
why doesn't Taylor Lorenz have to disclose that she is
also taking dark money? The difference here is that Omitir
is not a dark money group traditionally. Again, you could
kind of sort of try to make the argument that
they are because they do have a C four arm,
which technically means that some of its money could be
classified as dark money because those donors don't have to
(37:55):
be disclosed. But Omitir is not a dark money group
in the traditional set because with omdir you generally know
who was behind the money, Piero Midir, and you know
where that money goes. It is not set up to
obscure that fact like a true dark money group like
sixteen thirty is set up. So to me, that is
not really a fair critique of Taylor Lorenz at all.
(38:18):
I think folks, we're trying to make the point that
it actually is sometimes complicated to know where every single
source for every single dollar of your income is coming from.
And then if you're going to be calling out other
people on that, you then kind of have to be
willing for folks to start watching your pockets. And under
a system like capitalism, when you follow the source for
(38:40):
most money that moves around in this country, there might
be stuff in there that, yeah, we don't love. And
I think one of the reasons why people brought this
up as a critique on Taylor Lorenz and the wake
of the article is that, you know, being paid to
make content online, especially leftist content, is hard. Trust me,
the very few people out there are getting rich from
(39:02):
making leftist content on the internet. It is a hustle.
So I get the sense that these creators sort of
feel like they're being pocket washed a little bit, you know,
from you know that phrase pocket watched.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I don't know that phrase, no, but you have my attention.
What does it mean?
Speaker 1 (39:18):
So 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. And it's
not a good feeling. And so my sense is these
creators feel like they are being pocket watched in public,
right now.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Oh, interesting, I had not heard that, but that is
a useful phrase. I've definitely had that sensation of being
pocket watched. Now I have a label for it.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yes, pocket watched. So I do think the ethics of
taking money without disclosing it is a very fair question.
And just because it seems to not be in dispute
that Chorus is not paying creators to say or not
say specific messages, that doesn't mean there is no question
around the ethics of all of this. I think it's
really about trust. I want a world for us where
(40:05):
people are able to trust the massive political platforms that
they follow and have a sense of how and if
money is shaping the kinds of messages we're all seeing
on social media, and I do think that being cagey
about how you're paid probably gets us further from that ideal.
But I also think that this handful of creators didn't
set up this broken, complex system that we're all navigating,
(40:26):
And this, I think is the real meat of the article.
These creators are disclosing that they're members of this cohort,
but according to Lorenz, they are contractually prevented from disclosing
the financial relationship they might have with chorus and sixteen thirty.
And what is tough about this is that I have
no idea whether or not this is true. Lorenz says
(40:47):
that Wired looked at the contract, but it's not reprinted
in the article or anything, because that could potentially reveal
who that contract belongs to if they reprinted it. When
I was gearing up to do this episode, I was
all gung ho to send the contract to my own attorney,
who works on all of my contracts, to get his take.
Shout out to podcast attorney Lindsay. He is like a
(41:07):
certified silly goose and y'all would have loved hearing from him.
But the article doesn't publish any contract or any part
of any contract, so I couldn't even do that. And
that's an issue because the creators are saying, oh, well,
our contract doesn't say this, or they're saying, Taylor Lorenz,
who is not an attorney, is a misunderstanding what our
contract says. So there is a little bit of kind
(41:29):
of trust us in this article because readers cannot see
the contract for themselves. Lorenz has been very vocal on
social media saying that the creators in the cohort should
simply publish their contract if they think that she has
misrepresented it in her piece, and those creators are saying, well,
the burden of proof should be on the person making
the claim or the allegation. Why should I have to
(41:50):
provide my contract to speak to a claim that Taylor made.
So it's essentially a stalemate. So that's one of the
reasons that I can't really speak to the contract part
of this. I would have really liked the opportunity to
check out the contract for myself. I'm certain that Wired's
fact checkers and lawyers reviewed the piece before publishing it,
but I would have liked for it to be spelled
(42:11):
out that a lawyer who specializes in these kind of contracts,
like not just wires general counsel, somebody who is a
contract specialist, read the contract and confirmed that it said
all the things that the article says that it does.
I don't say that to criticize Taylor Lorenz. I just
know that contract legallees can be complex to parse. I
was actually just having a conversation with an attorney about
(42:32):
how attorneys who don't specialize in certain kinds of contracts
don't necessarily have the experience to know what those contracts say, so.
I think the article could have really dis 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. But I also don't
want to make it seem like I'm just dismissing what
(42:55):
Lorenz has brought up here. There are pieces raised in
the article that I think are absolutely worth talking about.
A big one is should dark money groups even exist?
You know, the sixteen thirty Fund is a dark money group,
but even their executive director, Amy Kurtz, has written publicly
about this. In an op ed written after the twenty
twenty four election, she writes, we recognize that our campaign
(43:17):
finance system needs to be changed. Sixteen thirty Fund has
been on the record actively supporting a massive rewrite of
the rules to provide more transparency and disclosure in our elections.
As we prepare to welcome the one hundred and nineteenth Congress,
sixteen thirty Fund will continue to advocate for reform that
restores our faith in our campaign finance system. No matter
where you fall on the ideological spectrum, everybody reaps the
(43:39):
benefits of democracy and transparency. So thanks to citizens United.
Dark money groups are able to have an opaque, unchecked
grip on our democracy. All dark money groups are not
doing nefarious things I can see from looking them up
on open secrets, which is a site that tracks money
in politics that sixteen thirty funds a ton of work
(44:01):
that I think is great and I'm totally ideologically aligned with.
But maybe we still shouldn't have a democracy that can
be controlled financially by forces that the public does not
really get to know about, even if they're doing it
along ideological lines that I personally agree with.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Yes, it's a good point, but also we shouldn't have
a democracy helmed by a fascist, narcissistic, pervert weirdo.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
But here we are, Yes, here we are. More after
a quick break, let's get right back into it. Well,
(44:48):
that really brings me to one of the pieces raised
in the piece that we have talked about quite a
bit on the show, which is how democrats can compete
with the vast shadowy creator and media ecosystem on the right.
We 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
(45:10):
wing organization, and 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. So 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, because when it comes down to dominating
(45:33):
the media ecosystem, it seems like folks on the left
are bringing a tote bag of books to a gunfight.
There has been so much talk of meeting the Joe
Rogan of the left, and a lot of the reaction
to Lorenz's piece has been people saying, while if folks
on the right are doing it, folks on the left
need to catch up, and we can't really do that
if it's going to be criticized and demonized like this
(45:54):
when we do it. Honestly, I don't really have the
answer here. I care quite a lot about transparentarancy in
government and politics. I think that people should have information
about whose money and what money drives our government and
our politics and our democracy. And sure I don't want
Dems to be unable to make use of the same
tactics that the right is kicking their ass with. But
(46:15):
I also don't like the idea of a government dominated
by big money with no transparency. Essentially, it is one
thing to say dark money groups should not exist. It
is another to say dark money groups exist, but only
the right should use them to further their ideology. Because
the right is really using them to further their ideology.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
They are really using them, and they are really using
them effectively. It 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.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Well. 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 personality like Tim Poole
were being paid by Russia to make content. The Wired
piece reads the structure of the program highlights the vast
(47:08):
differences between how Democrats and Republicans attempt to amass online influence.
Republicans have spent decades of building up a powerful independent
media ecosystem, though the right wing influencer world is far
from transparent. In September twenty twenty four, a federal indictment
alleged the Russian state sponsored network RT was covertly providing
millions in funding to Tenant Media, a company working with
(47:30):
major rightling influencers including Benny Johnson, Timpole, Dave Ruben, and
Lauren Southern.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
That story is so unbelievable. I can't believe it wasn't
a bigger deal. If we lived in a sane country,
there would have been intense fallout from that. There would
have been outrage all around, people still be talking about
It would have been like a historical violation of national security.
New laws would have been created to outlaw that very
(47:57):
specific method for foreign countries to influence in US elections.
But we did nothing. Absolutely nothing changed. And that's the
media environment we live in, so, you know, And it's
been like this since the Supreme Court gutted McCain fine
Gold fifteen years ago. And so I also love transparency
and think we should have so more of it, But
(48:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yes, 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.
I really hate that the resounding fallout has been around
(48:52):
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. And you know, it's
not like these creators wrote the Chorus contract themselves. In fact,
the piece includes text messages from a group chat where
the creators are pretty clearly not thrilled about a lot
(49:12):
of the contract. It 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. You 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
(49:32):
major major red flag for me personally. I would never
agree to an exploding offer. If 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.
That is not an offer that I want to sign. Personally.
I 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. You know, in this game,
(49:56):
everything is negotiable, and especially as somebody who doesn't make
a ton of money any one thing, I do the
ability to look at a contract and say, well, can
we change this? Can we change that? Like when you're
not making a ton of money, sometimes that's the only
real power or currency you have. And so personally it
does sound like to me Chorus is operating under some
shady contract dynamics. But now these creators are essentially being
(50:21):
held to account for the details of this contract that
they did not write. When I think the real entity
on trial here should be the people who work the
contract and our campaign finance system that allows for this
kind of thing to be legal. Like, don't hate the player,
hate the game.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
Yeah, and there's plenty to hate in the game of
American campaign finance. There's plenty to hate there. But you're right,
that doesn't really seem to be Like at the center
of the online controversy. The online controversy that has been
sustained for ten days now, which is longer than the
most news stories. It has seemed like pretty personal about
(51:00):
the specific creators, about Taylor Lrenz herself. And so it
is interesting that the Tenant media case where a bunch
of right wing influencers were caught taking money from Russia
to promote pro Russian points got comparatively so little attention
compared to this story about a handful of left leaning influencers.
Speaker 1 (51:20):
Yes, and I would say that if I had any
kind of big point about this whole thing is that
I think that how we talk about this stuff online
is completely broken. First of all, that article, I'll just say,
in my opinion, it is no short read. I read it,
you read it. This is gonna be where you're like, oh,
(51:41):
I regularly read ten thousand word articles all the time.
It's for fun. It's like, would you categorize it as
a long read?
Speaker 2 (51:47):
It was a long read. It was a long article.
I wouldn't say that it was like redundant or the like. Oh,
obviously they should have cut this, this and that, But
it was a long article. I just you know, kept
reading and reading, and there was more to read. There
is a lot to it, and so yeah, I do
wonder how many people have, like, actually sat down and
(52:10):
read the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (52:11):
I would wager to guess that a lot of people
commenting on the article on social media have not actually
read the whole thing. They are going from what the
social media chatter has been about it online. Even after
listening to this episode, I do think that people should
read the article for themselves and make up their own
minds about it, because, you know, don't take my word
for it. Read the article yourself. But as somebody who
(52:32):
has read the article several times and knows a little
bit about some of the issues that it raises, I
can tell you the online chatter about the piece has
really misrepresented it, regardless of where you fall on the
spectrum of agreeing with the piece or not agreeing with
the piece. I saw people say, oh, this article explains
why all the progressive influencers and creators all started fawning
(52:56):
over Gavin Newsome at the same time. But the article
never said is that that creators were paid to post
specific messages or content online. I 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. Like, those are specific
(53:16):
things that have specific meaning, and they have not happened
in this article. But 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
(53:38):
thing happening. You 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.
Now that very well may be true, but this article
does not paint that portrait at all in any specific way,
(53:58):
And I get why read it 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. Like,
who would want to focus on the difference between five
oh one C threes and five oh one C four
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, I
(54:21):
get it. I think the article can be interpreted in
such a way that 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.
I think that's why it has caused such a stir online.
The article has given people carte blanche to project their
(54:41):
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. So
to me, this piece is not really about individual creators
and whether they're good or bad, or shills or whatever.
It is about the big system. We all live in
(55:01):
a campaign finance system that lets billions of dollars move
through politics without much transparency. Whether it's Chorus sixteen thirty
fun or the right wing media machine, money in politics
shapes the information we all see online, and until that changes,
we're going to keep running into stories like this one.
That's why I think the real question isn't which influencer
(55:22):
got paid what, but how do we build a media
and political ecosystem that people can actually trust. Who do
we trust to shape our politics? And what happens when
even good creators get pulled into systems designed to obscure
power instead of revealing it. We can't get caught in
the weeds of internet drama and miss the bigger story
how money disclosed or not shapes the future we are
(55:45):
all living in. So that is my attempt at summarizing
what is going on with this article and some of
the responses to it online. I would love to hear
what folks think. This was not an easy one. I
spent quite a lot of time doing having a big
think and putting my thoughts together. So I want to
hear what folks think about this article. If you read it,
(56:06):
if you follow the reaction, what are your thoughts? Feel
free to disagree with me, That's always welcome. I really
want to know. How can folks get in touch producer Mike.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
People can send an email to share their thoughts to
Hello at tangoty dot com. They can leave comments on Spotify,
although for this one, I don't know. Maybe maybe an
email might get a little tweaky for the casual listener
in the future, who might be scrolling. But you know,
if that's where you want to leave your comments, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (56:33):
I read all the Spotify comments personally. It's my favorite
mechanism of commenting. Yeah, there's a lot of comments on
there now. People seem to really enjoy commenting there, which
makes sense. You're already there listening to the podcast anyway. Yeah.
I hate email, and so if you send an email,
it's like a crapshoot of whether I will read it
or Mike will read it, or Mike will read it
(56:53):
and forward it to me. I find the Spotify comments
to be a much more pleasing space. I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (57:01):
Oh, I didn't know you felt this way, but yes,
Spotify comments, all right, that's where it's at for you.
And then you can also find Bridget on social She's
on Instagram, Bridget Marie in DC. Same for TikTok, and
you can find there are no girls on the Internet
on YouTube, but you probably won't find a click from
(57:23):
this episode.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
I love that. It's like, wait, are we now the
Shadowy Organization, the Secret Shoes? I mean, this is this
is this is my personal opinions for you. Me and
are good friends listening? Keep it between you and me.
Speaker 2 (57:42):
Yeah, just the listeners. The video people will give them
something else, but they don't need to be part of this.
They don't want to hear about pass through organizations or
fiscal sponsors.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
Yeah, they're notably disinterested in campaign finance. Well, thanks so
much for listening, y'all. I will see you on the interhead.
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi, You can reach us at
Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
(58:13):
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland
is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
(58:35):
get your podcasts.
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