{"id":2268410,"date":"2026-02-05T19:06:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T19:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2268410"},"modified":"2026-02-05T19:06:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T19:06:17","slug":"not-all-influencers-are-celebrities-on-youtube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/not-all-influencers-are-celebrities-on-youtube\/","title":{"rendered":"Not All Influencers Are Celebrities on YouTube"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

[NB: Note the byline. ~Rayne]<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something hinky going on with news curation in Twitter. The story at the top of the Moments\/Trends yesterday in the mobile app was this one:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We now know the GOP anticipated additional accusers when the story above was published. This morning the story at the top of Twitter\u2019s mobile U.S. news feed is this one:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Which seems really odd that both of these stories push the White House\/GOP angle promoting the troubled nomination of Brett Kavanaugh by attacking accuser Christine Blasey Ford\u2019s credibility.*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the New Yorker story by Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow about a second victim alleging an assault by Kavanaugh<\/a> published last evening set Twitter timelines ablaze immediately and overnight. Yet that story isn\u2019t the one at the top of Twitter\u2019s US News this morning.<\/p>\n

Is this an example of poor or biased curation by Twitter? Or is this the effect of a public relations campaign (by a firm like CRC for which Ed Whelan has worked<\/a>) paying to promote a news article without any indication to the public that this elevation has happened?<\/p>\n

Would such a PR-elevated piece written by a news outlet ever fall under the scrutiny of the Federal Trade Commission as YouTube influencers\u2019 embedded promotions have recently<\/a>? Or would it slip by without the public\u2019s awareness because it\u2019s First Amendment-protected content?<\/p>\n

The Federal Communications Commission won\u2019t want to touch this subject because its chair Ajit Pai won\u2019t want to open up a can of worms about the internet and its content as a regulated commodity like broadcast radio and television.<\/p>\n

The Federal Election Commission hasn\u2019t looked at news-as-campaign-ads when such content is produced in the U.S. related to an unelected\/appointed official position.<\/p>\n

Google News is a little better this morning:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Note the position of the New Yorker piece in the feed. But it\u2019s not clear how any of the news related to Kavanaugh surfaces to the top of Google\u2019s news feed due to a lack of transparency let alone a particular story. The public doesn\u2019t know if there have been any attempts to manipulate the elevation\/submersion of a news story favorable\/unfavorable to any subject including unelected\/appointed officials.<\/p>\n

As a majority of Americans increasingly obtain their news online instead of by broadcast or print media, we\u2019re going to need more clarity about social media\u2019s role as a publishing platform and whether social media giants are still being used to manipulate public opinion.<\/p>\n

__________<\/p>\n

*<\/strong> First image is the expanded version as I didn\u2019t realize at time of screenshot there would be a relationship between top of Twitter news feed on September 23 and this morning\u2019s top of news feed. All images in this story are used under Fair Use for purposes of media criticism<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source emptywheel.net \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[NB: Note the byline. ~Rayne] There\u2019s something hinky going on with news curation in Twitter. The story at the top of the Moments\/Trends yesterday in the mobile app was this one: We now know the GOP anticipated additional accusers when the story above was published. This morning the story at the top of Twitter\u2019s mobile […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2268411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[439254,400846,439255,439256,55498,21928,309513],"class_list":["post-2268410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-brett-kavanaugh","tag-google-news","tag-influence-operations","tag-news-curation","tag-public-relations","tag-social-media","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Not-All-Influencers-Are-Celebrities-on-YouTube.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2268410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2268412,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268410\/revisions\/2268412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2268411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2268410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2268410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2268410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}