Double haters drive debate content
Twitter was a disaster for Biden, but on other platforms, content was firmly against both candidates
Last night, President Biden and former President Trump met in Atlanta for the first of two general election presidential debates in 2024. It was no doubt one of the biggest political moments of the year and presented both campaigns with opportunities to score points online.
Both candidates squandered those opportunities.
If the debate could be summed up in one viral meme, it would be this one:
Biden stumbled over his words, and Donald Trump’s blatant lies went unchecked. On Twitter, in group chats, and on cable news, the political chattering class had the biggest collective freakout in recent political history.
We’ll let the professionals who deal in hot takes spend the weekend publishing their panicked editorials about What It All Means for Democrats and posting them on Twitter with a ton of alarm emojis.
But off Twitter, the debate landed a bit differently. According to Crowdtangle, most of the top 10 most-liked posts on Instagram about the debate were either pretty neutral or emphasized how bad it was for both campaigns. That said, a few posts from right-wing accounts, like this one attacking Biden on Afghanistan and this one defending Trump on January 6th, broke through and received over 100,000 likes, shares, and comments.
And on TikTok, there was also a universal vibe that both candidates, not just Biden, were less than ideal for the moment.
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We’ve done a preliminary analysis of the most-liked posts mentioning “debate,” “Biden,” and “Trump” on TikTok over the past 24 hours. One of the most-liked videos about the debate on that platform came from @thedailyshow, which featured an epic Jon Stewart takedown that attacked Trump’s criminality and lies while suggesting both candidates should have taken “performance-enhancing drugs.”
Another video from user @gibz_ (that has over 6 million views and 1 million likes) tackles Trump’s lies and only briefly mentions Biden’s senior moments. This top-performing one from @milkatheemovement took the same approach. @staytunednbc shared the candidates’ bizarre exchange about golf, which has received millions of views as well.
Videos and posts exclusively mocking Biden’s age did not move as fast or as far as we expected them to. Instead, this type of “double hater” content outperforming anti-Biden content on TikTok and Instagram in the hours following the debate is probably a good thing for Democrats and the Biden campaign - or, at least, the least bad option after an embarassing night.
Digital ad spending, by the numbers:
FWIW, political advertisers spent just over $13.7 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:
A group called Project 72 WI PAC launched a new Facebook page called “Wrong Choice for Wisconsin”, through which it is running attack ads against GOP candidate Eric Hovde in the Badger State’s U.S. Senate race. The ads, which exclusively target women voters, attack Hovde’s strict anti-abortion stance and feature a clip of Hovde saying he is “totally opposed to abortion.”
Elsewhere on Facebook, spoiler presidential candidate and raven aficionado RFK Jr. spent over $98,000 last week on Facebook ads complaining about his exclusion from last night’s debate. “What is the difference between two and three?” one recent ad reads. “Two is black and white. Three gives rise to all the colors.”
Meanwhile, political campaigns spent $8.1 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:
On YouTube, there was some shady political ad drama happening in Pennsylvania last week. A super PAC named PA Values ran ads appearing to support Trump and intended to turn Republicans against mail-in voting. It turns out, it was run by Democrats and the ads were placed by prominent Dem firm GPS Impact.
On Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent $2.6 million on ads year to date. Here are the top spenders:
…and on X (formerly Twitter), political advertisers have spent over $5 million on the platform in 2024. Here are the top spending accounts:
Your 2024 digital dispatch
FWIW, here’s how weekly digital ad spending (Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube) compares between the Trump and Biden campaigns year-to-date:
This past week marked a record high spend for the Biden campaign across Facebook + Instagram and Google + YouTube in 2024: they spent a whopping total of $3,886,880. And that’s not even considering Future Forward, the super PAC supporting Biden, which spent another $1,144,360 online. By comparison, Team Trump and his affiliated super PAC in total spent only $341,798, about a 10th of the Biden campaign’s numbers.
More from around the internet:
In case you missed it, Instagram changed all users’ settings to limit political content on Wednesday, just one day before the presidential debate. A Meta spokesman called it “an error,” and the issue appeared to be resolved by yesterday morning. We have a lot of lingering questions about what happened, and many users on social media were distrustful of the company’s response.
“Go do your own fucking TikToks.” That’s some of the colorful advice the Biden campaign chair Jenn O’Malley Dillon gave to Democrats worried about the President’s re-election strategy this week. Read her full interview with John Heilemann at Puck here >>
A new report from The Righting showed traffic to right-wing news sites continues to crater.
The vibes on TikTok last week:
FWIW, here’s a look at 10 of the most-liked videos mentioning Trump on TikTok in the past week. (This data was pulled before the presidential debate):
The vibes on TikTok for Donald Trump this week were solidly mixed. The top video by far and away was one from Trump’s own @realdonaldtrump account that was a chaotic edit of Trump at a rally – at the time of creating this chart, it has received a whopping 20,500,00 views in the 3+ days since it was posted. On the other hand, a video from @thedailyshow roasting Trump supporters who still defend him also garnered a good amount of attention.
Meanwhile, here were some of the most-liked videos mentioning Biden in the past week:
The vibes on TikTok were pretty negative this week. The two most-liked videos were actually from non-English accounts @ufologiamg and @the.world.of.prede that claim that President Biden has been replaced by a robot. Another top trend this week, which includes videos from @theemptynestclub and @sheri_pie455, features people pranking family members with a fake Biden campaign donation receipt.
That’s it for FWIW this week. FYI, we’ll be off next Friday for the 4th of July holiday - and back in your inboxes the following week with some exciting news to share.
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