The New York Times reports:

In the first few months of his presidential campaign, Michael R. Bloomberg has been as aggressive on social media as President Trump was four years ago. But with a lot more money to spend.

Mr. Bloomberg has hired popular online personalities to create videos and images promoting his candidacy on social media. He is hiring 500 people — at $2,500 a month — to spend 20 to 30 hours a week recruiting their friends and family to write supportive posts. And his campaign has posted on Twitter and Instagram a flattering, digitally altered video of his debate performance last week in Las Vegas.

Through his money and his willingness to experiment, the billionaire former mayor of New York has poked holes in the already slapdash rules for political campaigns on social media. His digitally savvy campaign for the Democratic nomination has shown that if a candidate is willing to push against the boundaries of what social media companies will and won’t allow, the companies won’t be quick to push back.

“The Bloomberg campaign is destroying norms that we will never get back,” said Emerson Brooking, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which studies disinformation. The campaign, he said, has “revealed the vulnerabilities that still exist in our social media platforms even after major reforms.” [Continue reading…]