Palette Management is owned by [[Daniel Daks]]. In 2020, Daniel Daks helped the Biden campaign with its influencer outreach program. Sometime in 2021, or possibly late 2020, Daks forms Palette Management, an influencer talent agency. In September 2021, Palette Management lands, what I assume would be a big partnership with ATTN Media. ATTN is known for is its long-form political content, and has a relationship with Biden’s Team. In 2018, that relationship lead to creating “Here’s The Deal” a limited series starring Joe Biden that “aired” on IGTV (Now Instagram Reels). And it just so happens that in 2021, ATTN landed a deal with TikTok to run the TikTok for Good page. That same month Joe Biden signs executive orders reversing Trump’s looming half-baked deal what would have Oracle and Walmart buy a big chunk of TikTok. But that’s neither here nor there. In 2022, the White House paid Palette Management, an influencer talent agency, a $200,000 retainer to cover expenses for eight TikTok influencers to visit DC. Back to Palette Management. After a successful Covid information campaign using influencers, the White House wanted to use influencers to get pro-Biden messages onto the clock app. So, In 2022, the White House calls Daniel Daks who they’ve been in contact with since the 2020 election. And they asked Daks if he had any influencers around. And He was like you’re not going to believe this but I have a whole influencer company now. So the White House wires 200k to Palette Management, and Daks sends 8 influencers to the White House for a little smooshing. Now Daks maintains that those influencers were not paid anything. This article states that the money was a retainer to cover travel and hotel. But later Daks states that the White House paid him 200k for strategic consulting services. After that meeting with the eight influencers, the White House continued to call in more influencers. According to the visitor logs and this Intercept article, most of the influencers who visited was from Palette. Then, sometime in 2023 The White House hires a director of partnerships Morgan MacNaughton whose previous employer just so happens to be Palette Management. --- Now, could it be a coincidence that ATTN media, who has a relationship with the Biden Team, partnered with Palette whose owner also has a relationship with the Biden team, then locked a deal with TikTok folks who were, at the time, in negotiations with the Biden Administration to avoid being banned in the USA? Could all that be just a coincidence. Yes. The world is small. The business world is smaller. Does every business relationship where one entity hires employees from the company they're doing business with imply some sort of quid pro quo? No. Not necessarily. And just because the White House courts influencers with free trips, hotel stays, and extraordinary amounts of access to the most powerful man in the world, does it automatically mean that those influencers feel pressure to make content that the White House mostly approve of? No. But it does mean that they'll lose their access if they don't play ball. Taylor Lorenz interviewed a few TikTok creators last month and they all said the same thing- The moment they started making content about things like Gaza, the White House, the DNC, and Biden-Affiliated PACs stopped calling. They stopped inviting them to the White House. To dinners. To hotels. And in some cases, completely removed them from email lists. Now could the political influencers who have managed to maintain their access to the White House just so happen to have the same exact opinions? Sure! But we probably should answer whether these influencers are journalists or paid partners. Because there's a reason why journalists adhere to a ethical code, and why they don't accept gifts from politicians. It's because conflict of interests affect the stories they write. So if they're not journalists, and they're paid partners, how could that be? Because TikTok doesn't allow paid political ads on its platform.