A left-wing nonprofit is reportedly offering $8,000 per month to take part in a secretive program aimed at bolstering Democratic messaging on the internet.

Don’t blink, people, I’m about to say something that I have not said much in the past, and don’t expect to say much in the future: Taylor Lorenz has written an informative and useful article. It’s over in Wired, and it discusses payola from a left-wing group with deep pockets to progressive social-media influencers to ensure they stay on-message:

In a private group chat in June, dozens of Democratic political influencers discussed whether to take advantage of an enticing opportunity. They were being offered $8,000 per month to take part in a secretive program aimed at bolstering Democratic messaging on the internet.

But the contract sent to them from Chorus, the nonprofit arm of a liberal influencer marketing platform, came with some strings. Among other issues, it mandated extensive secrecy about disclosing their payments and had restrictions on what sort of political content the creators could produce.

…Now, Democrats hope that the secretive Chorus Creator Incubator Program, funded by a powerful liberal dark money group called The Sixteen Thirty Fund, might tip the scales. The program kicked off last month, and creators involved were told by Chorus that over 90 influencers were set to take part. Creators told WIRED that the contract stipulated they’d be kicked out and essentially cut off financially if they even so much as acknowledged that they were part of the program. Some creators also raised concerns about a slew of restrictive clauses in the contract.

…Creators in the program are not allowed to use any funds or resources that they receive as part of the program to make content that supports or opposes any political candidate or campaign without express authorization from Chorus in advance and in writing, per the contract.

The contracts reviewed by WIRED prohibit standard partnership disclosures, declaring that creators will “not publicize” their relationship with Chorus or tell others that they’re members of the program “without Chorus’s prior express consent.” They also forbid creators from “disclos[ing] the identity of any Funder” and give Chorus the ability to force creators to remove or correct content based solely on the organization’s discretion if that content was made at a Chorus-organized event.

Chorus describes itself as a “nonpartisan nonprofit advocacy organization”… that’s apparently running a “secretive program aimed at bolstering Democratic messaging on the internet,” which somehow sounds less than fully nonpartisan.

Ninety influencers at $8,000 per month comes out to $720,000 per month. That Chorus organization has some deep pockets over there. The organization’s web site has a short FAQ that includes, “who funds Chorus?” with the answer, “Chorus is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization with grassroots support from hundreds of individuals. We’re grateful to those who understand the importance of investing in the independent media ecosystem to make sure content creators have access to training and tools that help them grow.”

In fact, a lawyer for the organization said that the whole purpose of the institution was to obscure who was paying for what amounts to political advertising.

“There are some real great advantages to … housing this program in a nonprofit,” Graham Wilson, a lawyer working with Chorus, said to creators on a Zoom call reviewed by WIRED. “It gives us the ability to raise money from donors. It also, with this structure, it avoids a lot of the public disclosure or public disclaimers—you know, ‘Paid for by blah blah blah blah’—that you see on political ads. We don’t need to deal with any of that. Your names aren’t showing up on, like, reports filed with the FEC.” (Wilson did not reply to a request for comment.)

Now, in the world of journalism, if you’ve got a financial tie to someone you’re covering or discussing, at minimum you’re supposed to disclose it to your readers, listeners, or viewers. (This is why every Washington Post article about Amazon includes the line somewhere, “Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.”) Ideally, if you have a financial connection to someone or an institution, you don’t write about, comment on, or talk about them at all.

But in the world of influencers, it’s the Wild West, there are no discernable consequences for touting someone who is secretly paying you. (There were some similar cases when the bloggers were emerging.)

This is how you end up with Russian state media companies working through cutouts to build  “a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues” to pay “a monthly fee of $400,000, plus a $100,000 signing bonus and an additional performance bonus,” for programming that just happens to align with the interests of the Russian government. All of this came out in court last year, and there were no discernable professional consequences for any of the U.S. “heterodox commentators” who insisted they had no idea they were being paid by the Russian government. None of those right-wing influencers were charged with any crime.

Similarly, some may find it unusual to see so many seemingly independent commentators who seem to just sing the praises of the Qatari government for no discernable reason.

While taking money from a foreign government to tout its messages is the sort of thing you’re supposed to register with the Foreign Agents Registration Act, domestically, there are no laws covering this sort of thing. It’s simply a matter of professionalism and ethics.

Now, I know this is going to shock you, but it turns out a whole bunch of social media influencers might not be the most ethical people.