“Official voter guide,” read letters sent to voters in seven battleground states ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
By presenting undeniable comparisons of the applicants’ perspectives on key issues such as abortion, schooling, and democracy, readers were confident that they had “asked researchers to delve into the backgrounds, statements, and votes of local applicants in major legislative elections,” then provide this data to voters like you, so they can make an informed selection on election day.
Given that they were produced through My Voter Information, an assignment from Forward Majority Action, a dark money organization formed in 2017 to elect Democrats to state legislatures, it’s no surprise that those letters have a strong political focus.
Nor is it unexpected that, for six of the seven states, most of the documents “excavated” by researchers to construct those caricatured profiles of the candidates were low-hanging fruit, such as the candidates’ crusade and their social media posts. . , those from applicable advocacy groups, and online stories from local television stations or newspapers.
Exceptional advertisements that cover careers in Michigan.
Analysis of 92 emails shared on Forward Majority Action’s Michigan page revealed 69 quotes from the Main Street Sentinel, a mysterious, short-lived, quasi-local news site aimed at Michiganders on Facebook, garnering more than 100 million impressions in ten months thanks to an unaccounted ad spend of more than $1. 4 million.
Main Street Sentinel included 3 virtual entities: a website, a Facebook page, and an Instagram account, all created in February 2022.
The Facebook page, which classifies itself as a “media production and broadcasting company,” was created on Feb. 7, 2022, and the first post was published on Feb. 24, 2022. Their Instagram page only shows that the account has been created. February 2022, and the first visual post on August 14, 2024 is dated March 1, 2022.
The domain of the online page was registered on February 17, 2022, according to ICANN Whois records. The last Wayback Machine capture of a running online page is dated February 8, 2023. It now redirects to an Archie template page from Teal Media, a platform that promises websites “in a timely manner and with a limited budget” for “big ones”. non-profit organizations with small initiatives. Teal’s clients come with Courier Newsroom, the local partisan network of the liberal dark money organization Acronym.
The Main Street Sentinel was obviously designed to exploit Facebook’s targeting capabilities. According to data from Meta Ad Library, between $1,215,000 and $1,665,689 were spent on classified ads for the page between February 25, 2022 and November 18, 2022. (The Meta Ad Library provides a figure of $1,412,891, which it describes as “the estimated total amount of cash this advertiser spent on classified ads on social, electoral, or political issues. “
This spending appears to have allowed the Sentinel to be ahead of many Michiganders. Meta’s Ad Library provides minimum and maximum numbers for ad impressions (the “number of times an ad was shown on a screen, which would potentially generate insights through the same people”) and the approximate placement of ad impressions. Facebook users who won classified ads. According to this data, Main Street Sentinel classified ads garnered between 108. 5 million and 123. 9 million impressions, 99. 4% of which were in Michigan (approximately 107. 9 million). Another measure of Michigan’s targeting reach is that California ranks second, with about 61,000 impressions.
Sentinel’s first ad crusade kicked off on February 25, 2022, with 30 classified ads of ten items. These can be grouped into 4 thematic groups:
These classified ads, which charge $8,900, garnered 1,078,000 impressions, according to metaknowledge. The 27 classified ads for which the Meta Ad Library goes back to regional knowledge were viewed exclusively through users in Michigan. (The Meta Ad Library retrieves location awareness for classified ads with fewer than 1000 impressions. )As a result, Facebook delivered more than one million impressions to this fake news operation within 4 days of its launch. publication.
The Main Street Sentinel gained some attention in the early and final days of its short life, much of which highlighted the opacity around its property.
On March 27, 2022, Axios discussed it as part of a report on Real Voices Media, an organization responsible for “a vast network of social media communities in battleground political states that can be activated ahead of elections and political struggles. “, Axios wrote, “It’s unclear who the site is. Its indexed publisher, Star Spangled Media LLC, was formed last month [February 2022] in New York and lists a registered agent service as its sole principal.
Shortly after, on April 11, 2022, conservative news site National Review covered the Sentinel with the headline “Your Favorite Facebook Page May Be a Trojan Horse for Progressive Propaganda. “The report calls Sentinel “an online page whose call screams small town. “news, but it’s a left-wing propaganda site that offers a heavy dose of Democratic spins and speech problems in the White House. “
A month before Election Day, the Sentinel was subpoenaed in an investigation co-published through the Substack Statehouse Action and FWIW newsletters, the latter of which has longstanding ties to the Courier Newsroom. FWIW is led by Kyle Tharp, who held communications positions at Acronym and Good Information Inc. , and is now national general manager of Courier Newsroom. FWIW is now indexed as a Courier Newsroom newsletter.
Presenting a positive view of the Sentinel, the authors of FWIW/Statehouse Action said, “Of all the states holding competitive congressional elections this year, Democrats and their allies appear to be conducting their most complicated virtual operation in Michigan. “
Added:
Candidates, the state party, and outdoor groups are attacking all Republicans across the state with abortion-related ads.
In the past 90 days, the one that spent the most on political classified ads on Facebook in Michigan wasn’t Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s crusade or a primary national advocacy group.
Rather, it was a difficult-to-understand progressive virtual political organization called Main Street Sentinel. The liberal site, affiliated in one way or another with a progressive Facebook network called Real Voices Media, has spent more than $700,000 on classified ads supporting Democrats. for the state legislature and other offices.
Continuing his summary of increased virtual ad spending around Michigan’s declining election, he noted that Forward Majority Action Michigan had “introduced new ad campaigns on Facebook attacking Republican applicants from the negative side. ” Three of the classified ads submitted through Forward Majority Action Michigan in September and October were posted on myvoterinformation. org.
Shortly after, weeks before Election Day, NewsGuard featured Sentinel along with Courier Newsroom, the American Independent, and Metric Media in a report detailing about $4 million in political ad spending on Meta platforms. They also noted the difficulty of understanding where it came from and reported: “The Main Street Sentinel claims on its online page that it is owned by Star Spangled Media LLC, [however] the group’s classified ads on Facebook and Instagram imply that they are ‘paid for by the Main Street Sentinel’ through The Main Street Sentinel, a call that does not appear in any state advertisement and which provides the ads with a patina of journalistic authenticity. NewsGuard’s findings drew more policies from Bloomberg’s Davey Alba, under the headline “Meta Makes Millions from Political Ads. “From fake ‘Pink Slime’ newsrooms. ” Alba noted a connection to Democratic strategist Will Robinson, first reported in Axios’ March report, but added, “The other investors are not known, however, the site has published several articles with President Joe Biden and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as a beneficiary.
To date, nothing has been reported about how Main Street Sentinel works outside of Meta platforms.
Forward Majority is a super PAC created in 2017 to assist Democratic applicants in state legislative elections. It is affiliated with the Forward Majority Action PAC and has many state-specific derivatives. Forward Majority Action Michigan was the largest recipient of the Forward Majority Action PAC’s budget during the 2022 election cycle, according to Open Secrets.
When the super-PAC was introduced in 2017, Politico wrote: “The Advanced Majority style includes targeting more races that are most likely to affect the maximum number of local parties or state caucuses. The purpose is to flip the GOP chambers. ” to the Democrat by employing darlings Crusade tactics are rarely used in local elections of this type, adding polling and message testing.
According to OpenSecrets, Forward Majority earned $4. 1 million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the shadowy organization with a history of deceptive investment media operations such as the Main Street Sentinel. As Anna Massoglia reported:
In 2018, the Sixteen Thirty Fund sponsored social media pages and virtual operations for five pseudo-local media outlets in 3 states. They gave the impression of being independent from the others, but they promoted themselves with almost the same virtual advertisements.
Facebook pages operating under the auspices of the Colorado Chronicle, Daily CO, Nevada News Now, Silver State Sentinel and Verified Virginia gave the impression of several independent local news outlets with names and disclaimers. But the sponsors of those classified ads are just fictitious names. used through the Sixteen Thirty Fund, according to data from virtual ads and incorporation records from the Washington D. C. government.
In mid-2022, the Target States page in ForwardMajority. org said, “Forward Majority Action is pleased to endorse Democratic applicants in several key states.
The 8-state target pages, available through the Wayback Machine, showed a breakdown of “that state’s program information. “This included Forward Majority’s target constituencies, a breakdown of the subset of the electorate it would target, the virtual classified ads it would target (typically via YouTube), and the accompanying strategy for physical mail.
Michigan’s Postal Strategy, dated October 27, 2022, 11 days before Election Day, states: “We will send mailers to the electorate with a midterm participation rate > 5, with supporters in the middle among 30 and 60. ”
In addition to the five dates on which other letters would be “delivered” (ranging from October 5 to 28), Forward Action attached PDF files of the letters it would send to the electorate to meet its target criteria.
A total of 92 pieces of mail were sent to Michigan, the same number for any of the 8 target states.
All the names of the records followed the same pattern:
[State]-[Mailing Item Number]-[House & District]. pdf
e. g. , MI-M01-HD22. pdf (Michigan-Mail Piece 1-House District 22)
Each letter followed the same fundamental formula of contrasting the positions of Republican and Democratic applicants on three key issues (e. g. , women’s health/abortion access, water quality, education/public schools, environment, public safety, and taxes ). for each one.
To give one example, data on Senate District Nine candidates’ views on women’s fitness indicated that Democrat Padma Kuppa “opposes efforts to ban abortion and will enshrine the protections of Roe v. Wade in the state law,” while her Republican rival, Michael Webber, “has the support of a far-right anti-abortion organization and opposes access for women even if they are victims of rape or incest. He even voted to limit access. to contraceptive methods.
The 69 quotes from the Main Street Sentinel, all similar to those from Democratic candidates, were distributed in 38 Forward Action letters. Of those, 57 were discovered in 26 mailers covering House elections in six districts. The other 12 were printed in 12 advertisements covering the 3-district Senate elections.
Of course, this means that some candidates’ profiles cited the Main Street Sentinel multiple times. At the high end of the scale, the five mailers covering the House District 83 race between John Fitzgerald (D) and Lisa DeKryger (R) relied on the Main Street Sentinel for all three claims about Fitzgerald’s policy positions.
Another curiosity is that the URLs for the Sentinel articles followed the same “[House and District]” naming conference used for the PDF files of the Forward Majority letters. For example, while Forward Majority’s advertisements selling Fitzgerald were MI-M01-HD83. pdf, MI-M02-HD83. pdf, etc. , the URLs of the articles cited as evidence of their perspectives on the keys to the problems were:
We don’t know if Forward Majority Action has any connection to the Main Street Sentinel. The organization did not respond to requests for comment.
What we do know is that they were incredibly willing to leverage that as part of a targeted influence operation. The fact that this supposed news site has been continuously cited in physical mail to augment and spread narratives through an expensive virtual advertising crusade shows something of another undeniable application of this election tactic.
We also know that the Main Street Sentinel is remarkably consistent with a strategy of leveraging virtual platforms for localized data warfare that Forward Majority laid out in a “Plan for Power” in January 2022.
Arguing that Democrats’ superseded virtual playbook had given Republicans carte blanche to influence persuasive audiences by targeting them with localized political narratives, this document had many echoes of the notorious memo Tara McGowan sent to Acronym stakeholders outlining her vision of what Courier Newsroom would be. Training
The timing of the “three accelerators for building power” defined in the Forward Majority document, titled “Long-Term Storytelling and Branding with Key Audiences,” outlined what Democrats perceive:
A replaced playbook can’t compete with right-wing propaganda: Array. . [T]he vast majority of the ordinary electorate spends only a few moments choosing their vote, a resolution governed by existing narratives about parties, increasingly influenced by the right. State-of-the-art media, disinformation and propaganda.
What follows is a vision of a solution, which boils down primarily to a strategy of fighting fire with fire:
Opportunity to break through by creating a local narrative and logo: To counter this, especially in the Republican trio states, Democrats want a local communications operation that is just as ruthless, but more astute and opportunistic. in the electorate – and long before the election season begins – we will need to help reshape local political narratives in our target constituencies. This includes an accountability statement that highlights incumbent Republicans’ record on unpopular legislation, strengthens the local Democratic logo, undermines the GOP logo, and highlights the impact of state legislatures on people’s lives. Democrats have focused too much on targeting and not on content. This means that we know who to talk to, but much less how to speak as best as possible to move emotions and achieve electoral objectives. What is needed are next-generation approaches to content research, testing and delivery, leveraging earned and paid media. In particular, this local logo culture and strategic communication has the potential to influence not only local races, but also to drive winning narratives and shift partisan affinities from below that can influence the broader electorate.
The Main Street Sentinel looked like a disposable Courier-lite. It focused on a competitive swing state; had a strategy to identify the compelling electorate and spent significant amounts of cash to microtarget them through Facebook ads; He stressed the importance of addressing the electorate with a small number of localized political narratives.
Speaking after Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020, McGowan called local partisan news unparalleled in its ability to help Courier achieve its overtly political goals. McGowan warned in particular that the beloved Courier network could be some sort of short-term political endeavor:
In fact, I wouldn’t have invested in a local news network if there were models who were starting to gain traction and succeed in covering this territory and countering misinformation at the local level. I’m just not someone who is willing to endorse and watch democracy die in the meantime if there are short-term answers that can be implemented on a giant scale.
In the same interview, McGowan described the expensive but effective quest to “commercialize. . . news content for audiences who are in those narrative deserts” and “distribute it to the news sources and platforms where they spend their time. “
Although the seven-figure ad puts it on the more expensive end of the spectrum, one could simply argue that the Main Street Sentinel is a manifestation of McGowan’s reasoning taken to its logical conclusion.
Active for less than 12 months, it is a short-term solution. With at least 108 million impressions, it has been deployed at scale. Using Facebook’s targeting features to succeed at a pre-identified segment of the compelling electorate in an express location, those were marketing narratives targeting micro-targeted audiences on the platforms they spend their time on. And while its total spending of about $1. 4 million is closer to what Acronym would have spent each week in the run-up to the 2020 election, it is still, to use McGowan’s words in the same interview, ” incredibly expensive. “
The Main Street Sentinel case shows the extent to which platforms allow deep-pocketed political influence operations to contaminate geospecific data streams on a giant scale. In this case, a new page with a logo is capable of generating more than a million impressions in a specific state within 4 days of its first publication. At the time of its dissolution, having met its political goal, it had amassed at least 108 million impressions in less than 12 months.
Figures like these explain why this trend shows no signs of slowing down.
Earlier this year, studies through Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub showed that teams with ties to Russia had used generative AI to whitewash pro-Kremlin narratives on local fake news sites with names like DC Weekly, Miami Chronicle and New York News Daily.
The emergence of such sites suggests that the appetite for polluting the virtual data ecosystem with political narratives disguised as news remains strong.
The case of the Main Street Sentinel only highlights the enduring appeal of this style or the blatant hypocrisy of teams who claim to be driven by a commitment to strengthening democracy while undermining journalism and degrading the news ecosystem. It also highlights the lack of interest in the platform. corporations to do something about it.
The gap between the ease with which political actors can flood the ecosystem and the ease with which citizens bombarded with it (and researchers interested in examining it) can identify where it comes from. Of course, it all comes down to money.
While we can get an idea of how many times the Sentinel managed to infiltrate Michiganders’ Facebook feeds, we can’t know if they were successful in convincing voters.
But we can be sure that if their operators succeed, they will have something similar in the works before November 5, as countless contemporaries of all political persuasions did.
Whether your platform of choice is Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, or even print, we’ll be watching.
The Tow Center maintains a list of partisan and politically supported news sites here. It includes main points about individual networks, copies of physical mail that has been sent, and existing searches on individual networks. If you get physical mail, have examples of similar networks. operating in your area, or if you would like more detailed data, please contact us here.
The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, a CJR partner, is a think tank exploring how the generation is transforming journalism, its practice and its admission, as we seek new tactics for judging reliability, standards and credibility of online news.
See articles about towing »
Visit the Towing Center »
The voice of journalism, since 1961