US political groups are increasingly using influencers, a practice the FEC's campaign finance laws do not regulate, relying on an honor system for disclosures
Stephanie Lai / New York Times :
Context & Ripple Effects
The influencer-as-political-channel story has been building for years: a 2018 investigation found 12 Facebook campaigns masking sponsorship of political issue ads, Facebook then formalized paid political partnerships in early 2020 on the condition that posts be labeled, and researchers later documented candidates and PACs shifting budget toward influencers precisely because platforms were clamping down on bots and ads (the 2020 PAC-to-influencer turn).
What the New York Times adds is the regulatory hole underneath all of it: the FEC's campaign finance framework simply does not cover influencer payments, so disclosure rests on an honor system. By the time groups backing Harris or Trump were paying thousands per post in 2024 with scant oversight (per the Washington Post's accounting), the gap had gone from theoretical to structural.
First-order effects
- Political groups can route messaging spend through influencers without the disclaimers or reporting that attach to conventional ads, and individual creators now face no legal disclosure obligation — only whatever platform labeling policy applies.
- Facebook's paid-partnership labeling rule becomes the operative constraint on these posts, since the FEC provides none.
Second-order effects
- Enforcement pressure shifts onto the platforms themselves: after the 2018 masked-sponsorship findings showed even voluntary Facebook disclosure was being evaded, platform audit capacity — not election law — is what stands between paid influence and undisclosed advocacy.
- As influencer rates rise with demand from well-funded groups, disclosure compliance becomes a competitive disadvantage for honest creators relative to those willing to skip it.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US campaign finance enforcement effectively cedes the fastest-growing persuasion channel to private platform policy, making disclosure quality dependent on each network's rules rather than federal law.
- A widening gap between where political money actually goes and what regulators track points toward eventual pressure on the FEC to define influencer payments as regulated expenditures — though whether that comes before or after a major undisclosed-spend scandal is genuinely open.
The trend: Political advertising is migrating into creator channels faster than campaign finance law is adapting, leaving platform labeling policies as the only disclosure backstop.