Holy Shit... Did you morons lose Taylor Lorenz???: A Dark Money Group Is Secretly Funding High-Profile Democratic Influencers
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 3, 2025 07:33
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A Dark Money Group Is Secretly Funding High-Profile Democratic Influencers
An initiative aimed at boosting Democrats online offers influencers up to $8,000 a month to push the party line. All they have to do is keep it secret—and agree to restrictions on their content.
by Taylor Lorenz
https://archive.is/JoTXs#selection-699.0-699.194
Quote:
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.
In their group chat, influencers debated the details.
“Should we send a joint email (with all of our email addresses) … or, are we just going to send things separately and hope they change everything for everyone?” Laurenzo, a nonbinary creator in Columbus, Ohio, with over 884,000 TikTok followers, asked the group. Some joked about collective bargaining. “Any Newsies fans here?” Eliza Orlins, a public defender and reality TV star known for her appearances on Survivor, posted in the group. “‘We’re a union just by sayin’ so!’”
The influencers in the chat collectively had at least 13 million followers across social platforms. They represented some of the most well-known voices online posting in support of Democrats, and they’re key to wherever the party moves next. But ultimately, the group didn’t make much progress.
“Reading through this revised Chorus contract like: you win some, you lose some,” a reproductive justice influencer named Pari, who posts under the handle @womeninamerica, responded later in the thread. “I also think there’s at least 4 other things that should change "laugh: but the vibe I got from their email was that there would be minimal, if any, changes.” (Laurenzo, Orlins, and Pari did not reply to requests for comment.)
“I don’t feel strongly about pushing tbh,” Aaron Parnas, a Gen Z news influencer who has been called the Gen Z Walter Cronkite and has been lauded in legacy media outlets, posted to the chat. “They aren’t going to modify it anymore. Seems like a take it or leave it.” (Parnas declined to comment.)
“I believe we are in Stage 5: Acceptance,” Pari responded. Creators began signing on to the deal.
For years, Democrats have struggled to work with influencers. In 2024, President Joe Biden’s White House snubbed several prominent content creators after they lightly criticized the administration over its policies on climate change, Covid, Gaza, and the TikTok ban. Content creators who challenged Kamala Harris—including Hasan Piker, a well-known influencer on the left—were similarly unwelcome at campaign events.
After the Democrats lost in November, they faced a reckoning. It was clear that the party had failed to successfully navigate the new media landscape. While Republicans spent decades building a powerful and robust independent media infrastructure, maximizing controversy to drive attention and maintaining tight relationships with creators despite their small disagreements with Trump, the Democrats have largely relied on outdated strategies and traditional media to get their message out.
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.
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With all the derailment that Second and Ted's obsession with my success in life despite my lack of a college degree, I can't find the thread where I asked where this dark money was coming from. I thought it was either in here, or the thread about Trump being alive and well and playing golf.
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=67034
Nope. It's not there.
It must have just been a one-off reply I made to Ted or Second in one of their threads, but I can't find it.
Besides the point... anyhow...
I speculated that the $8k per month they're paying these Lefty influencers, which was supposed to be a big secret until Taylor Lorenz of all people outed the whole operation, was either residuals from USAid, some money that Biden* socked away somewhere that DOGE didn't find, George Soros' sons or maybe even Russia.
Taylor did a pretty good job with this article, but I managed to dig up something she didn't, or more likely purposefully ignored. Information that came from congress.gov, and an article they wrote while Joe Biden* was still President late last year (September 19th, 2024), citing an article written by CNBC (on January 4, 2023). It's all part of a PDF document up on congress.gov in this link:
https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/117680/documents/HMKP-118-J
U00-20240919-SD006.pdf
Nonprofit financed by billionaire George Soros quietly donated $140 million to political causes in 2021
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KEY POINTS
George Soros’ backed nonprofit invested at least $140 million into politically charged nonprofits just one year before the midterm elections.
Those donations are on top of the more than $170 million Soros personally contributed
during the 2022 midterm election cycle to help Democratic campaigns and political action committees.
The Soros nonprofit separately donated approximately $60 million to charitable 501(c)(3)s which are prohibited from participating in politics
Also...
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Soros, who personally donated $170 million during the 2022 midterms to Democratic candidates and campaigns on top of that, spread the additional largess through the Open Society Policy Center — a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that falls under the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations network, according to a copy of its 2021 tax ling, which was obtained by CNBC and is the most recent data available. The Open Society Policy Center also doled out $138 million to advocacy groups and causes in 2020. Two of Soros’ children sit on its board, the tax lings and its website show.
Nothing so far.
But then we get to page 5 of 7 of the PDF, where it lists out "The Open Society Policy Center’s other donations listed on its 2021 990"
Quote:
Sixteen Thirty Fund: $23.9 million
The group acts as a “dark” money fund for “progressive changemakers” and groups that often align with the Democratic Party. It provides operational support, like HR and legal resources, to progressive organizations. It recently raised more than $189 million and made $107 million in grants.
GOTCHA.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Oh... and by the way, Ted. This means that all those clickbait videos you've been watching and reposting were all funded by George Soros too. Not only that, but your boy Brian Taylor Cohen is actually one of the architects of spreading this dark money around through "Chorus".
From Taylor Lorenz's Article posted in the OP:
Quote:
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.
...
Chorus, which is described in contracts reviewed by WIRED as a “project of” The Sixteen Thirty Fund that handles operations for the creator program, launched in November 2024 as a nonprofit arm of Good Influence, a for-profit influencer marketing agency aimed at helping content creators connect with social-good campaigns. Good Influence was founded in October 2020 by Stuart Perelmuter, the former communications director for representative John Yarmuth of Kentucky. Seeing an opportunity after Kamala Harris’ loss last November, Perelmuter cofounded Chorus with Democratic influencer Brian Tyler Cohen, who has over 4.6 million subscribers on YouTube and leads messaging check-ins for the creator cohort on “rapid response days.” According to records reviewed by WIRED, Chorus claims that its initial creator cohort has a collective audience of more than 40 million followers with more than 100 million weekly viewers and that the organization has “hundreds of creators signed up” and “ready to amplify” messaging.
All of your clickbait has been funded by foreign billionaire influence, and it's currently being pushed out by people like Brian who are fully aware of where this money comes from and sees no problem with foreign billionaires influencing Americans IN SECRET VIA NDAs.
Are you going to wake up already, or are you just going to keep sleepwalking through all of this?
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Seriously? No thoughts from anyone on this?
Probably the most important story in the current news cycle right now.
But keep watching your foreign influencer clickbait and drooling I guess.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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