It's a racket: How online influencers are 'getting paid' to manipulate your vote

More often than not an online influencer will remind his or her audience that they are being paid for their services, even if the announcement isn’t completely overt. That’s the case with progressive influencer Carlos Eduardo Espina and others, said New York Times writer Ken Bensinger.

“[Espina] revealed a surprising endorsement to his 14.5 million followers on TikTok: He would support Tom Steyer, the billionaire running for California governor as a Democrat.

“I really believe Tom Steyer is different,” Espina said in a posted speech. “He could be traveling around the world or doing whatever he wants, but he wants to serve the people of this state.”

Bensinger points out, however, that Steyer’s campaign was paying him $100,000 “to help win the election.”

“The $100,000 fee, buried in campaign finance records, is described as a payment for “strategic advice and campaign surrogacy.” The money went to a limited liability company in Texas that Mr. Espina also used to receive a travel reimbursement from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2024,” said Bensinger, adding that the financial report offers a rare peek into the world of “pay-for-play social media, where content creators and marketing firms are compensated to promote candidates and opinions in an environment that offers few disclosure requirements.

Over on the conservative side of the spectrum, Bensinger reports marketing firm Creator Grid, “has received almost $875,000 from the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee since late 2023, including a payment of $35,840 in February.” On its website, Creator Grid says it “connects Republican candidates with the internet’s most powerful conservative influencers.” But don’t expect to see many similar revelations because political social media agencies scarcely appear in F.E.C. records.

“In part, that is because much of the money to the creators originates from nonprofit advocacy organizations that are not required to report their spending, rather than from campaigns or political action committees,” Bensinger reported.

Last summer when right-wing influencer Dominick McGee, known as “Dom Lucre,” blasted former President Barack Obama on X for opposing the extension of the Trump tax cuts for wealthy Americans he was paid for the post, said Bensinger. And his post was viewed 1.3 million times.

And influencer Jessica Reed Kraus revealed that a post she amplified on X by Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) was part of an organized campaign offering influencers money in exchange for amplifications.

“I didn’t do anything wrong here,” Kraus insisted. “Anything I am getting paid for, I don’t want people to think I wasn’t.”

This, however, is the same undisclosed networking that made possible embarrassing revelations of international support of influencers by Russian and Chinese entities.