WASHINGTON- In the 2024 elections, hundreds of social media influencers were credentialed for the first time to attend the Democratic and Republican conventions. They have been invited to Christmas parties at the Pennsylvania governor's mansion, political rallies in Texas and events at the White House by the Biden and Trump administrations.
The role of influencers is increasing as candidates and groups across the political spectrum see their social media profiles and personas as a path to younger audiences and harder-to-reach groups of voters.
“You have that feeling of authenticity, like a friend is talking to you,” said Emma Briant, a professor at the University of Notre Dame's Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society who studies propaganda.
That's exactly what campaigns hope to leverage when they partner with influencers, he said.
But the nature of that partnership has been called into question in California's hotly contested gubernatorial race after it emerged that several content creators — some with millions of followers, others with just a handful — had received payments from Democratic candidate Tom Steyer's campaign and failed to disclose that they were paid to create those posts.
Some popular content creators have felt the need to explain themselves to their audience. Others have questioned how common these undercover payments might be, since there are no disclosure requirements for paid content at the federal level and few jurisdictions have rules mandating it.
Some campaign finance advocates worry that voters may be increasingly influenced by social media posts they don't know are sponsored.
“The problem is that it doesn't look like an advertisement,” said Saurav Ghosh, a former law enforcement lawyer at the Federal Election Commission. “It really ends up taking people to a place where they are not skeptical and can't distinguish between what is voluntary and what the influencer is acting as a paid spokesperson.”
Ghosh is now the director of campaign finance reform at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, which filed a petition asking the FEC to require liability waivers on paid content created by influencers.
About 1 in 5 Americans said they regularly received news from social media influencers in 2024, according to the Pew Research Center, and that figure was nearly double for younger adults ages 18 to 29.
Working with social media creators can be an easy way for candidates to try to improve their image, especially among a younger audience.
“If they don't have big personalities, maybe partnering with some influencers who seem cool and fun can make you seem cool and fun too through the association,” said Link Lauren, a political influencer and podcaster who served as a communications adviser for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 2024 presidential campaign.
California is one of the few places that requires disclosure of sponsored posts on social media, but the 2023 law that created those rules hadn't received much treatment before the issue was raised in this race through a series of dueling complaints with the California Fair Political Practices Commission. The commission has yet to comment on the various accusations.
Under the law, influencers must disclose that a post was sponsored and say who paid for it. Political groups must notify paid creators of the requirement.
Even if the commission determines that violations have occurred, the penalties are not particularly harsh.
Violation of the law does not carry civil, criminal or administrative sanctions. The FPPC can take alleged violators to court and ask a judge to enforce compliance. And violations can be punished with a fine of up to $5,000 per case.
Influencers denouncing influencers
In the gubernatorial race, the issue of compliance was raised, naturally, by a couple of influential people.
Beatrice Gomberg has amassed more than 180,000 followers on TikTok, where she posts under the name antiplasticlady. Her side job creating non-plastic children's cups and lunch boxes became her main job after she lost her human resources job at Macy's during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I started using social media because I didn't want to hire a marketing company,” Gomberg said.
Initially, Gomberg's publications focused largely on plastic-related research, but over time they have become increasingly political. When the campaigns put out a call for influencers to meet with the candidates, Gomberg responded.
He interviewed Katie Porter and met with Xavier Becerra. And it was at a Becerra event in April when he met Kaitlyn Hennessy, another influencer focused on politics.
They found that the world of online influencers can be isolating. “We looked in front of our phones,” Hennessy said. “You don't want to see our screen time.”
As they scrolled through social media posts about the gubernatorial race, they found a cause that united them.
They continued to see videos posted by social media accounts that embraced similar messages in support of Tom Steyer. Hennessy initially wondered if they were actually created by artificial intelligence.
They found that the posts appeared to have been created by a network of women who, in some cases, had created several different profiles to promote a variety of products.
They closely examined Steyer's campaign disclosures and saw that the campaign listed payments to several prominent influencers, including one by the name Zay Dante, with 1.8 million followers on TikTok, who had not disclosed creating paid content for the campaign.
The couple filed a complaint outlining their allegations, which Steyer's campaign called “baseless.”
Following his complaint, Steyer defended his campaign's use of paid influencers, writing on Substack that his campaign believed content creators should be paid for their work and that the campaign had been transparent in disclosing those payments.
In a separate post, influencer Carlos Eduardo Espina said he had been paid $400,000 for work he did for Steyer's campaign. Espina, who has more than 14 million followers on TikTok, is an advisor to the campaign, which was announced publicly.
“You will never see anything on my channels that I don't believe in, or that I believe is against the best interests of my community. No one buys my opinion. But I also think it's fair to be compensated for my work,” he wrote on Substack.
Not everyone is willing to accept payment for posts.
Lauren, the influencer who advised Kennedy's campaign, said that while he doesn't mind other influencers accepting endorsements, he chooses not to.
“A passive viewer might think you really believe in this,” he said. “I have a strong connection with my audience. I truly consider them my family.”
Lauren said she is in favor of disclosure requirements.
Briant, the propaganda researcher, said she is concerned about the possibility of foreign actors trying to influence Americans through paid positions.
In 2024, for example, federal prosecutors filed an indictment alleging that Russian state media employees had paid nearly $10 million to a Tennessee company that paid popular right-wing social media influencers to unknowingly produce pro-Russia content.
Briant said he believes the only way to counter greater manipulation through social media influencers is to impose severe penalties when paid content is not disclosed.
“Ultimately, it's a wild west right now if there are no repercussions for not doing it,” he said.
