US President Joe Biden’s main re-election SuperPAC is raising millions of dollars to try to solve a problem plaguing Democrats: how to compete with Republican Donald Trump’s social media machine, which has released a series of viral videos.
The previously unreported effort by the highly secretive Future Forward USA Action underscores widespread concerns among Democrats and Biden donors that he and his campaign are losing a viral video war with the Republican Party, which relentlessly portrays him as too old and out of tune.
Democrats say they are playing catch-up in a battleground with few rules or ways to police manipulated or misleading content before it reaches tens of millions of Americans on their smartphones.
The Palo Alto-based SuperPAC, backed by tech giants like Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and LinkedIn founder Reed Hoffman, is raising at least $10 million to help better understand the algorithms that help Trump and his allies dominate vertical video platforms.
It also plans to collaborate with left-leaning influencers to help generate and disseminate new content, according to two sources familiar with the plans.
Many popular social media platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram, have adopted short, vertical videos as their primary format. They have given rise to a network of “influencers” who use the platforms to reach millions of Americans with content about what they are eating, wearing and thinking.
Future Forward joined Democratic groups Way to Win and Hub Project last month at a luxury Washington D.C. hotel to host 140 influencers at a three-day event called “Trending Up,” according to organizers.
Future Forward’s current effort is focused on Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and TikTok, sources said.
“Future Forward is there to help solve problems, and TikTok is a problem and the group is reasonably trying to solve that problem,” said one of the Democratic sources.
The social media battle could have an outsized impact on a race between Biden and Trump that polls show is extremely close and features two unpopular candidates.
Since February, when the Biden campaign officially joined the TikTok platform, it has posted more than 200 times and gained just over 380,000 followers. Trump joined TikTok about two weeks ago, but has already accumulated 6.4 million followers.
Social media plays a crucial role in Americans’ news consumption, especially among younger people. Half of U.S. adults get their news at least sometimes from social media, according to the February Pew Research Center study.
Chauncey McLean, director of Future Forward, did not respond to requests for comment. The group, which plans to spend $250 million on television and digital ads this campaign season, rarely speaks publicly about its activities.
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