Nitasha Tiku

And this is like about as unethical as you can be.

I mean, you guys know.

No, so the thing is, and I've written extensively about this, not only is the FTC kind of asleep at the wheel, so a lot of these influencers don't disclose brand deals, but the brands, the brands are more legally cautious.

So if you're doing a campaign for Unilever, the influencers probably doesn't care that much about compliance

Dove's chief compliance officer does care.

The issue is, is that there is no regulation for political content because it doesn't fall under the FTC.

It would theoretically fall under the FEC, which is basically a sort of non-existent entity that has no interest in regulating the space.

So what we've seen over the past couple of years, really, especially since 2024, is

is just this vast proliferation of dark money groups, C4s, that they don't have to disclose who's funding them.

And the influencers don't have to disclose that they got paid to push messaging.

And so they're out here pushing political messaging left, right, and center.

And I think it's so corrosive to democracy.

We have a quote from a media scholar in the story saying like, you know, this is like extremely bad for democracy.

Yeah.

I mean, the content that we saw from these influencers is they're literally repeating almost verbatim the messaging from this dark money influence group, really the super PAC.

And they're just putting it out there in their content, making videos as if this is something that they believe and thought of and came up with.

And there's no just... Again, there's no disclosure of who funded it, why they funded it.

I mean, sometimes they'll hashtag it sort of buried down just a generic hashtag ad.

But that almost makes it seem like a brand paid them and nobody... There's no... Again, there's no... And that's like maybe 1% of them do that.

99% of them don't disclose it as an ad.