If you are going to sell your soul...

A briefing for astroturfers

HAVE YOU received a message from an organisation that wants to “work with producers whose progressive content can cut through the noise and counter the division and disinformation spread by the far right”? Freelance journalist Amun Bains did. As John McEvoy reports it for Declassified UK, that approach came from digital communications agency named 411.

The agency, incorporated on 11 September 2024 with a website registered on 13 July 2024, announces that it was “born from the digital team behind Labour’s 2024 General Election campaign”. Its name refers to the number of Labour MPs elected on 4 July 2024.

It does not announce that Assaf Kaplan, listed on a now-deleted page on its website as “a director at 411 [who] previously worked for the UK Labour Party for four years, leading the social organising and counter-disinformation...“, was reported in 2021 by Asa Winstanley in the Electronic Intifada to have worked previously for Unit 8200, the cyberwarfare arm of the state of Israel.

A snippet of what the biography page used to say

411 has been advertising for in-house content producers and advertising executives.

But what 411 wanted from Amun was to post at least five “progressive” videos a week on his social media accounts. After a call with Assaf Kaplan and senior manager Caitlin Otway, it promised a “statement of work” but accidentally sent a script for welcoming new recruits. That promised a weekly briefing on what topics to focus on - see snippet above.

When the statement of work arrived it noted that “The Freelancer agrees to maintain the confidentiality of any sensitive information shared by 411 as per the NDA [Non-Disclosure Agreement] Contractor Agreement.” That NDA included instructions to destroy any confidential information associated with The Amplifiers “on demand”.

For this, 411 was offering... £50 per week.

And the statement of work stated... you guessed there was a copyright grab? “All work created under this agreement will be the intellectual property of 411 unless otherwise agreed in writing.”

The Freelance cannot help observing: if you are going to sell your soul, get a better price.

Not journalism, more like ‘astroturfing’

The proposed work is advertising, not journalism. It is regulated. Guidance from the UK Advertising Standards Authority states that “if you’re paid in any form... and the brand has shared control over the content, the post must be obviously identifiable as an ad.” In general, marketing “must not materially mislead by omitting the identity of the marketer.”

It is not clear that 411 intends to respect this. Declassified UK reports seeing an internal 411 document with the annotation: “Do we want to specify anywhere that we want the content to be faceless?”

For a journalist to distribute advertising without disclosing who is sponsoring it would very likely be a breach of the NUJ Code of Conduct. Indeed, you should recall that the Code states that a journalist “does not by way of statement, voice or appearance endorse by advertisement any commercial product or service save for the promotion of her/his own work or of the medium by which she/he is employed” (emphasis added).

None of this is to say that the Freelance opposes communications of progressive content that can cut through the noise and counter the division and disinformation spread by the far right. But we are firmly against “astroturfing” - giving the impression of “grass roots” with a product that is entirely synthetic. It may be that 411 has been unfortunate in exposing itself by accident, while more competent astroturfers successfully cover their tracks. In any case, journalists must be very, very careful if you do choose to engage with any such scheme.

Journalists secretly offered cash for social media posts www.declassifieduk.org