The right-wing podcasters turned Russian propaganda dupes, explained
“An FBI investigation found evidence that the media outlet RT, previously called Russia Today, which is run by the Russian government, “secretly plant[ed] and financ[ed]” a Tennessee content creation company; the indictment describes Tenet in all but name. The company is then alleged to have stealthily spread pro-Russian, anti-democracy propaganda to millions of people across the internet, primarily via YouTube, TikTok, and other major social media platforms.”
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“According to the indictment, the pair, who worked on digital projects for the outlet, used shell companies in the Middle East and Africa to secretly provide nearly $10 million to the company believed to be Tenet between October 2023 and August 2024, while directing it to spread anti-US and anti-Ukraine messaging. Per the indictment, the RT staffers “covertly fund[ed] and direct[ed]” Tenet and its content, including personally editing and posting content themselves and directing what others posted.”
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“The associated influencers who have responded to the news have all claimed they knew nothing of Tenet’s Russian affiliations. “Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims,” Pool tweeted Wednesday.”
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“two of the pundits entered into contracts of between $400,000-$500,000 a month to create video content for the fake Grigoriann. Most of the $10 million in funding that Tenet received went to creator studios, including, per the indictment, “$8.7 million to the production companies of Commentator-I, Commentator-2, and Commentator-3 alone.””
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“The Russians not only contracted the most prominent influencers to create content for them through their fake financier, at various points they directly edited the footage submitted to them. One Tenet staffer identified as a “producer” in the indictment protested, when asked to post a video promoting a US influencer’s visit to a Russian grocery store, that it felt like “shilling.” He was ordered to post the content anyway. The Russians would also request that creators make specific content, including, for example, videos about a terrorist attack in Moscow.
The sad part of all this, however, is that this kind of content has become so mundane across the conservative internet that it’s nearly impossible to distinguish what comes directly from the Russian government and what originates from the influencers they employed. After all, while the six figures who were contracted with Tenet might have been unaware of or unbothered about who was paying them, they raised no objections to the content itself. (In fact, the only objection noted in the indictment is a complaint one of the podcasters raised that Grigoriann’s bio was suspect because he mentioned a focus on “social justice.”)
That, perhaps, speaks to how effective Russia’s disinformation war has really been. The indictment claimed that from November 2023 to August 2024, Tenet network members created over 2,000 videos among them, which generated 16 million views for Tenet and its Russian benefactors. At the time the scandal broke, Tenet Media’s YouTube channel had a not-insignificant 300,000 subscribers.
That’s not a shabby number by any means, but it pales beside the larger, unquantifiable scale of influence itself.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/370323/tenet-media-russia-what-happened-tim-pool-dave-rubin-benny-johnson-lauren-southern