Table of Contents
“I hope it convinces Democrats that we need to invest more in this. They need to work with creators, not just young creators but all types of creators, to try to grow our numbers on some of these platforms,” says Ryan Davis, co-founder and COO of People First, a political and relational influencer. Marketing firm that partnered with the Biden and Harris campaigns.
Amelia Monthoth, a progressive creator who supported Harris’ campaign, believes Democrats need to get to work building their own progressive media ecosystem. She’s not just thinking about a liberal Joe Rogan or individual progressive influencers, but entire media outlets. In fact, she’s already trying to do it herself: Montooth is also co-founder and CEO of Mutuals Media, a digital media startup trying to unseat right-wing cultural brands like Barstool and Old Row.
“What the right does really well is have a funnel that I think starts with Barstool Sports and reaches mass audiences,” Montooth says. “The left is missing the top and middle of those funnels… Instead of working with individual influencers, they should focus on building that part of the ecosystem, that funnel.”
One of the most surprising findings of the Pew report was that the majority of news influencers included in the study have X accounts (85 percent). YouTube came in second with 50 percent of creators using the platform. The report doesn’t look at how active they are on
Even with new options like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, X still has a monopoly on text-based social platforms. However, the report does not take into account X’s departure after the elections. However, in the coming weeks and months, I’m curious to see how that 85 percent might fall to new competition from alternatives like Bluesky, which has grown to more than 20 million users after the election. Musk wanted X to be the city’s digital plaza, but the billionaire’s endorsement of Trump could make that dream less possible.
The chat room
Are you one of these 50 million people who get at least some of their news from news influencers? Who do you follow? Why do you trust them? Are there lessons traditional media could learn from them? I want to hear what you think!
Send your thoughts to mail@wired.com.
Wired readings
Do you want more? Subscribe now for unlimited access to WIRED.
What else are we reading?
🔗 The strangest domains Alex Jones has to give to The Onion: The Onion bought Info Wars last week, and the infamous conspiracy site comes with a handful of silly domain names, like goblinlove.com and cuckdorsey.com. (Gizmodo)
🔗 Truth’s social investors expected to become “very rich” after Trump’s victory. Not quite: Some of Trump’s most ardent supporters gambled on purchasing Truth Social shares. The former president’s re-election was supposed to boost the company’s value, but it has not yet done so. (The Washington Post)
🔗 Maxwell Frost Runs to Be First Generation Z Congressional Leader: Democrats are still reeling from their election losses, but they will soon select DNC leaders who could take them in a new direction. Maxwell Frost, a Florida congressman who ran digitally savvy campaigns, announced this week that he is jumping into the race to co-chair the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. (Axios)
The download
in it CABLING Policy Lab podcast This week, Leah speaks to Vittoria Elliott and David Gilbert about Bluesky, X, and the fragmentation of social media platforms.
I’ll be taking a break from the newsletter over Thanksgiving, but it will be back in your inboxes on December 5th.
For now, here is justin trudeau making a milkshake with a sweet old man on TikTok.
That’s all for today. Thanks again for subscribing. You can contact me by email, instagram, unknown, blue skyand Signal at makenakelly.32.