Yesterday, The New York Times reported that Mike Bloomberg is working with Meme 2020 for the purpose of having the company make memes that support Bloomberg’s presidential campaign. Today, The Verge reported that Facebook will allow the memes for political campaigns, so long as the posts are clearly identified as ads. The memes will not be placed in Facebook’s political Ad Library.
“Branded content is different from advertising, but in either case we believe it’s important people know when they’re seeing paid content on our platforms,” a Facebook spokesperson told The Verge. “We’re allowing US-based political candidates to work with creators to run this content, provided the political candidates are authorized and the creators disclose any paid partnerships through our branded content tools.”
Personally, I wouldn’t have guessed that out of all the people who are running for president it would be Mike Bloomberg who decided to pay influencers to make memes about him. I don’t think there are too many 77-year-olds who understand what memes are, how fast they spread, or what they mean. I’d like to hear the story of how Bloomberg came to the conclusion that memes were exactly what his campaign needed.
But, that’s not the weirdest thing about this situation. According to The Verge, The Meme 2020 project is part of Jerry Media, the promoter behind the infamous Fyre Festival. Meme 2020 is led by Mick Purzycki, the executive director of Jerry Media. What could possibly go wrong?