#Dlive

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Taylor Lorenz at Substack:

We need to know who is funding the creator economy

Yesterday, a federal indictment revealed that a Tennessee media company working with right-wing influencers including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Lauren Southern, was receiving significant funding from the Russian state-sponsored network RT to push Russian disinformation. The indictment is absolutely wild and WIRED has a great rundown on the details, including how the propaganda efforts worked. The case serves as the latest high profile example of how “independent media” on the right is anything but independent, and underscores the need for more transparency around funding models in the creator economy. It also shows how disinformation efforts have increasingly focused on penetrating U.S. media through content creators, and how lucrative being a pawn in these schemes can be. While right wing content creators position themselves as scrappy upstarts, leaning into anti-establishment and populist brand positioning, they frequently accept money from far right interest groups, extremist billionaires, and even foreign actors.  Tenet Media received nearly $10 million, distributed out across a network of YouTubers and podcasters. As part of the disinformation campaign, Tenet Media influencers published hundreds of videos on social media that promoted Kremlin talking points. The videos were shared across platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok, reaching tens of millions of viewers.

[...] The far right recognized the opportunities in personality-driven media decades ago. After boosting talk radio stars in the 80s and 90s, when social media proliferated, they began to invest heavily in news influencers who seamlessly blend entertainment, news commentary, and far right political messaging into YouTube videos, Instagram memes, podcasts and more. 

[...]

Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire has been heavily funded by wealthy Republican donors, including the Wilks brothers, Texas-based billionaires known for their oil and fracking fortune. Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, has benefited from significant funding from conservative mega donors including the Koch network.  When right wing creators began getting deplatformed more frequently on mainstream social media apps in the second half of the 2010s, an entire ecosystem of alternative platforms aimed at helping extremist influencers monetize and amass audiences, cropped up. Rumble, a video sharing platform similar to YouTube backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, began paying far right influencers and anti vaxx content creators hundreds of thousands of dollars to create content on its platform in 2021. Locals, a newsletter platform owned by Rumble, allows influencers to monetize through newsletters in a similar way to Substack. DLive, a right wing Twitch competitor, allowed influencers storming the Capitol building on January 6th, to make thousands of dollars off their live streams. Kick and Cozy.tv, two other right wing live streaming platforms, permit nearly any far right extremist the ability to create content and start earning money. And X, under Musk, has paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to right wing influencer accounts.

The robust financial backing the right wing content creator ecosystem enjoys, allows extremists the ability to fund professional production teams, social media ad buys, and marketing initiatives that give them a competitive advantage online. In contrast, progressive creators are left to rely on meager donations and crowdfunding efforts to sustain their work. This financial imbalance has made it nearly impossible for left-wing content creators to match the reach or production quality of their right-wing counterparts. Already, several Russia-backed Tenet Media influencers, including Benny Johnson and Tim Pool, have been doing damage control. They've publicly stated that they had no idea about the origins of the money and claimed that they were merely unwitting victims who were misled by the company. 

Right-wing media influencers like Nick Sortor (even though he wasn’t named in the indictment), Benny Johnson, and Tim Pool aren’t “independent media” in any way.

[parforjpar]

some gifs from the entoan & dlive whisper challenge video :3

[zann20]

Finalized the Spider Icon and started setting up the blank base to work on the suit/outfit ideas! Hopefully get some good ideas down for that next time!

[risingphoenixtv]

Multi Platform streaming is my future

Multiplatform streaming is my future, and I am gonna continue to do it. And no I'm not doing all those platforms you see in the photo but those are the possibiliti

es and all new audiences you can meet

[rothsothy]

It took a year to finish the timelapse video hah. Here it is for its anniversary! Happy New Year! 🥳🖥️✨🪟

Background music/soundtrack is a custom track I made inspired by The Transformers

[maxipowell]

Polaroid picture perfect 📸

[parforjpar]

dlive & louie <3

[zann20]

Started working on the spider icon for my spidersona! knocked out a few ideas now i need to figure out what to keep and get rid of lol!

[thermesiini]

i get paid tomorrowwww

[sketch-mer-6195]

imagine supporting a horrible person. gross.

https://www.tumblr.com/dlivee/754431555426992128/jon-bernthal-one-of-the-biggest-zionists-in?source=share

As someone who has followed Bernthal (as best as I can as I don't have Twitter, Instagram or Facebook), everyone is entitled to their own opinion and ideas.

I, personally, don't see Jon in such a light as you have shown in that link. I have watched his podcast with Shai and Marylin. But he also has episodes with all types of people! From different walks of life, careers, lifestyles, and so forth. Do I sound like I'm supporting him wholeheartedly? Probably, and I still see him as a rather decent human being.

Whether you support those in Gaza or Israel, or both. We can't discriminate against people because of who they see is in the right in the Middle East. If they support the Palestinians, good for them. If they support the Israelis, good for them too!

For the directors and LAPD.... seriously? And from what I saw... most of those Twitter posts came from one guy who we don't know is telling the truth or not. In today's day and age with technology and people splicing and putting together what they want to hear or have their viewers/listeners/readers want to know. We have to take things with a grain of salt.

Especially from social media! Really, people grow up. Watch actual news channels on television. Or even better, Google it or read about it in a newspaper. We can't take people's word for it on social media. Especially if it's just some random dude and not an actual reporter from a known newspaper or news channel.

In the end, just do your research. Don't take Twitter so seriously. And if you like Jon Bernthal, keep being a fan and supporter. If not, just go find someone else and leave the guy alone. He's already had enough shit happen to him.