Latvian Clip Farm Floods Social Media Feeds With GOP Content

If your social feeds are suddenly packed with punchy clips boosting Republicans, one Latvian entrepreneur may be part of the reason. A man calling himself "Serviuos" is recruiting people—often outside the US—to slice up preselected conservative videos and repost them on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, promising they can earn big money if the content racks up views, reports the Atlantic. The project, dubbed "Elephant Clipping" and run by Serviuos' company ClipIt, runs largely through Discord servers and Google Drive, pays out of a $300,000 monthly budget and instructs participants to mask their locations and avoid disclosing that they're part of an organized campaign.

The operation is classic "astroturfing": centrally funded, coordinated messaging made to look like organic, American grassroots enthusiasm. Related clip campaigns, some with budgets approaching $900,000 a month, push content featuring figures such as President Trump and Vice President Vance. The files feeding these efforts appear to come from employees of Enclave & Key, a Vegas marketing firm led by Blake Wynn, nephew of GOP mega-donor Steve Wynn. Enclave & Key calls what it does routine and legal; transparency advocates say that the mostly unlabeled political clips highlight a regulatory blind spot for digital campaigning and show how covert influence efforts have evolved since 2016. More here.