Russia exploits antiquated US election laws to pay off American influence

Daniel Weiner, director of the program on elections and governance at the Brennan Center for Justice, told Business Insider that the case demonstrates a “huge gap” in political advertising rules.

The Federal Election Commission requires clear disclaimers on broadcast, newspaper and Internet content ads detailing who paid for the ad. But the rules don’t extend to paid influencers. In January, the Brennan Center sent a legal letter to the FEC asking it to add disclosure requirements for when candidates pay influencers for their online support.

“It illustrates the potency of influencers and other newer methods of political communication as tools for foreign interference in the election process,” Weiner told Business Insider.

The two plaintiffs, both employees of RT, a Russian media organization, attempted to “influence the American public by secretly planting and funding a content creation company on U.S. soil,” which posted videos on X, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, according to the Department of Justice.

The company in question is Tenet Media. The Justice Department didn’t name the company in its filing, but there were enough details for anyone paying attention to figure it out. The Tennessee-based group publishes content from podcasters and influencers such as Tim Pool and Benny Johnson, who have said they were unaware of Tenet’s ties to Russian funding. Garland confirmed in a news conference that Tenet has not disclosed those ties to his influencers.

While there are disclosure requirements for online political ads, they mostly apply to “those traditional pop-up ads that you would see being spread 10 years ago or so,” Weiner said.

“For influencers and other really new forms of communication, there’s almost no transparency, and that’s a problem. There is no real transparency through regulation, and there is little or no transparency even on the voluntary rules that the big online platforms have. adopted,” he said.

Social media platforms have adopted ad libraries to increase ad transparency. Meta, for example, has adopted an ad library that “includes all active and public branded content that is displayed on Facebook and Instagram with a paid partnership tag,” according to its website.

But such databases, Weiner said, generally only apply to traditional advertising buy requests.

“If instead you’re paying an influencer who’s active on a site, there’s absolutely no way for the platform to know that that person was paid,” Weiner said, noting that the Federal Trade Commission requires influencers to disclose whether brands i pay promote the products. “But generally, even there, that mostly applies to commercial transactions. There’s really nothing when you’re talking about paid influencers for political purposes.”