Stop letting right wing influencers cosplay as ‘independent’ media
Yesterday, a federal indictment revealed that a Tennessee media company working with right-wing influencers including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Lauren Southern, was receiving significant funding from the Russian state-sponsored network RT to push Russian disinformation.
The indictment is absolutely wild and WIRED has a great rundown on the details, including how the propaganda efforts worked. The case serves as the latest high profile example of how “independent media” on the right is anything but independent, and underscores the need for more transparency around funding models in the creator economy. It also shows how disinformation efforts have increasingly focused on penetrating U.S. media through content creators, and how lucrative being a pawn in these schemes can be.
While right wing content creators position themselves as scrappy upstarts, leaning into anti-establishment and populist brand positioning, they frequently accept money from far right interest groups, extremist billionaires, and even foreign actors.
Tenet Media received nearly $10 million, distributed out across a network of YouTubers and podcasters. As part of the disinformation campaign, Tenet Media influencers published hundreds of videos on social media that promoted Kremlin talking points. The videos were shared across platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok, reaching tens of millions of viewers.
Right wing creators are often propped up financially because they defend the interests of the rich and powerful. While they cosplay as bold truth tellers, these influencers can receive millions of dollars to produce content that aligns with certain political agendas.
According to the DOJ, Benny Johnson, Tim Pool and Dave Rubin were getting paid $400,00 a month, at least $100,000 per YouTube video, by RT. Johnson even allegedly negotiated a $100,000 signing bonus. The median annual salary for a journalist, meanwhile, is $57,500, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"I just think it's funny (!) that if you are 10 degrees left of center, never mind actually on the left, you have to pester your readers for $5 every second of your life or you'll die," the journalist Luke O'Neill posted shortly after the news broke. "But, if you are a negative charisma Hitler 2, they back a cash dump truck up to your mansion every day."
As I wrote in my book, Extremely Online, this massive disparity in funding when it comes to content creators on the right vs left, is deliberate.
The far right recognized the opportunities in personality-driven media decades ago. After boosting talk radio stars in the 80s and 90s, when social media proliferated, they began to invest heavily in news influencers who seamlessly blend entertainment, news commentary, and far right political messaging into YouTube videos, Instagram memes, podcasts and more.
Renee DiResta, a researcher and author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, said that "buying authentic influencers is a far better use of funds than creating fake personas, because they bring their own trusting audiences and are actually, you know, real."
Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire has been heavily funded by wealthy Republican donors, including the Wilks brothers, Texas-based billionaires known for their oil and fracking fortune. Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, has benefited from significant funding from conservative mega donors including the Koch network.
When right wing creators began getting deplatformed more frequently on mainstream social media apps in the second half of the 2010s, an entire ecosystem of alternative platforms aimed at helping extremist influencers monetize and amass audiences, cropped up.
Rumble, a video sharing platform similar to YouTube backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, began paying far right influencers and anti vaxx content creators hundreds of thousands of dollars to create content on its platform in 2021. Locals, a newsletter platform owned by Rumble, allows influencers to monetize through newsletters in a similar way to Substack. DLive, a right wing Twitch competitor, allowed influencers storming the Capitol building on January 6th, to make thousands of dollars off their live streams. Kick and Cozy.tv, two other right wing live streaming platforms, permit nearly any far right extremist the ability to create content and start earning money. And X, under Musk, has paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to right wing influencer accounts.
The robust financial backing the right wing content creator ecosystem enjoys, allows extremists the ability to fund professional production teams, social media ad buys, and marketing initiatives that give them a competitive advantage online. In contrast, progressive creators are left to rely on meager donations and crowdfunding efforts to sustain their work.
This financial imbalance has made it nearly impossible for left-wing content creators to match the reach or production quality of their right-wing counterparts.
Already, several Russia-backed Tenet Media influencers, including Benny Johnson and Tim Pool, have been doing damage control. They've publicly stated that they had no idea about the origins of the money and claimed that they were merely unwitting victims who were misled by the company.
But while they may not have known the specific details of where the money came from, it's worth asking why none of them ever questioned why any entity would want to pay them $100,000 per video, an obscene rate that's not even close to industry standard.
As creator-driven media becomes the dominant way people consume news and information, this lack of transparency around funding poses a significant threat to media integrity. Unlike traditional outlets, where business models are more regulated and visible, the creator economy is deeply opaque, leaving audiences vulnerable to manipulation by hidden interests.
Nothing dismantles the narratives pushed by these grifters cosplaying as “independent media” faster than exposing where they’re actually getting their money from, but It's crucial that we seek more transparency from influencers and influence-driven media companies across the political spectrum.
Without full knowledge of who is financing the creators we follow, watch, and read, how will any of us know whether the content we're consuming is shaped by dangerous hidden agendas or foreign interference?
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What I’m reading
How to Make Millions as a Professional Whistleblower
A little-known provision in US law permits anyone to blow the whistle on financial fraud—and potentially take home a percentage of the funds collected. One undercover sleuth has made a wild career out of it. - GQ
Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art
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Is Shanin Blake, the ‘Alien Conspiracist E-Girl,’ for Real?
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‘Right to Repair for Your Body’: The Rise of DIY, Pirated Medicine
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The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case
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Viral TikTok Series ‘Who TF Did I Marry?’ Gets TV Adaptation
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