Bloomberg plans to pay people $2,500 a month to text about him
Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is going all in on social media.
His Democratic presidential campaign team is putting out a call for so-called "deputy digital organizers" who will reportedly work for 20 to 30 hours a week and receive $2,500 per month in exchange for promoting Bloomberg via text each week to everyone in their phones' contact list, while making daily social media posts in support of his campaign, The Wall Street Journal reports. They'll also likely have to do some more traditional campaign work every once in a while like phone banking.
It's another example of how Bloomberg's wealth gives him a leg up in certain situations. Most campaigns rely on a mix of volunteers and paid staff to phone bank or go door-to-door while encouraging their supporters to promote them over social media, but, per the Journal, experts say Bloomberg's willingness to pay to do all those things is novel.
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One thing that's unclear is if the social media posts for the digital organizers should qualify as sponsored content on platforms like Facebook, which the Journal notes, is just beginning to grapple with the intersection of political advertising and influencer marketing. The campaign reportedly thinks the posts shouldn't require an advertising label since they consider it to be a new form of political organizing rather than paid influence content. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.
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