Super PACs are raising millions of dollars to help President Biden counter former President Trump’s recent social media success.
Future Forward USA Action, based in Palo Alto, California, is backed by tech giants such as Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. The group has raised millions of dollars to better understand the algorithms that help Trump create viral videos. Reuters reported.
With Democrats concerned that they are losing the battle to Republicans over social media, the group plans to work with left-leaning influencers to generate new content to spread online.
According to Reuters, the super PAC’s current efforts are focused on Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and TikTok, as well as the many influencers who garner the attention and support of millions of online users.
“Future Forward exists to help solve problems, and TikTok is a problem and the group is working hard to solve that problem,” a source told the outlet.
The Biden-Harris campaign launched a TikTok account in February in an attempt to reach younger voters amid lingering concerns about Harris’ age, who is 81 years old.
Biden has signed a bill that could ban the app in the US.
In early June, Trump joined TikTok and within 24 hours surpassed Biden in number of followers, with Trump’s first video garnering more than 2.3 million likes and 38 million views within 15 hours.
The Hill reached out to Future Forward for comment, but Reuters noted the group rarely discusses its activities. The outlet said the super PAC plans to spend $250 million on TV and digital ads this election cycle.
TikTok isn’t the only social platform the Biden campaign is concerned about.
In late May, a social media analysis found that many of the accounts posting support for Trump and criticism of the current president on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) were fake. The analysis found that 15% of accounts praising Trump were fake, and 7% of accounts praising Biden were fake.
