Nitasha Tiku

I mean, this dark money group that I reported on last year that has been funding hundreds and hundreds of influencers to push overt political messaging, they didn't disclose any of it.

So you're following... You as a consumer...

And we just saw this poll come out recently that the majority of Gen Z get their news directly from influencers.

They're just consuming paid messaging left, right, and center.

And I just... I also think that... I know every influencer thinks their beat is the most important beat, but I really...

I feel like these influence campaigns are affecting everything from business to politics.

We have a huge amount of money getting in here.

And there's really not critical reporting on the influencer economy.

I think most tech reporters are so focused on the actual tech leaders as we should be, right?

Like Elon Musk, Sam Altman and stuff.

But it's like, hey, let's take a look at what's happening on these platforms.

It's gotten really bad.

And I just think we need a lot more oversight and critical reporting on all that stuff.

Yeah, we're going to have the AI safety content house on one corner.

We're going to have the pro-AI super PAC content house on the other corner.

It's going to be a whole mess.

One thing I'll say just about the flip-flopping is we have seen a lot of content creators change their political positioning based on what's more profitable.

And I actually was just speaking to a manager yesterday of a big progressive content creator, and he said he's been trying to push him

to adopt a slightly different political ideology online because it's more profitable.

And, you know, we've seen political evolutions, like this is what people talk about of like grifting to the right, especially promoting like right-leaning or sort of reactionary ideology.