Inside a Conservative Operation to Hijack Your Social-Media Feed
A service run from Latvia offers payment for short, social-media-friendly clips designed to look like grassroots GOP support.
In a conservative operation aimed at manipulating social media feeds, a company called Elephant Clipping based in Riga, Latvia is paying subcontractors to create bite-sized video clips promoting Republican values. These clips are then posted on platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, in hopes of going viral. The campaign, which has a budget of $300,000 per month, has subcontractors from Eastern Europe and the global South working on it.
The goal of the campaign, as stated by Serviuos, the person behind Elephant Clipping, is to ensure a Republican win in the USA. The company uses Discord servers and Google Drive to manage the campaign, but does not disclose who is funding it. Clippers are instructed to use U.S.-based proxy servers and hide their location online to avoid detection.
Despite efforts to obscure their identity, some clippers have inadvertently revealed their participation in the campaign. This form of orchestrated messaging is an evolution of astroturfing, a tactic used to create the appearance of grassroots support.
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