What was it like to work for Facebook’s political ad team in 2016, and what can today’s campaigns do to take advantage of the platform? Tara spoke with Facebook-turned-ACRONYM employees Tatenda Musapatike and James Barnes - who worked for Facebook to support campaigns on both sides of the aisle - to discuss what they learned while working for the social media giant.
What was it like to work for Facebook’s political ad team in 2016, and what can today’s campaigns do to take advantage of the platform? Tara spoke with Facebook-turned-ACRONYM employees Tatenda Musapatike and James Barnes - who worked for Facebook to support campaigns on both sides of the aisle - to discuss what they learned while working for the social media giant. Produced by Wonder Media Network.
Tara McGowan: Welcome to For What It's Worth, I am Tara McGowan. So unless you live under a rock, you know that Facebook's been in the news a lot over the past few weeks with a debate that's picking up steam online on how they should be regulating political advertising on their platform. Something we think about a lot at ACRONYM. One thing though that's not up for debate is the fact that Facebook had an immeasurable impact on the 2016 presidential election and is already playing a major role in the 2020 campaign, something we're going to dig into in today's episode. I am very excited to have with me two individuals who understand Facebook under the hood better than most people. In 2016 they were two of Facebook's key political staffers working for both the Clinton and Trump campaigns. And I have successfully convinced both of these individuals to work for ACRONYM full time and help us take the fight to Trump this election. You may have read a little bit about one of our guests in the Wall Street Journal. That is James Barnes and we also have with us Tatenda Musapatike.
Tatenda Musapatike: Hi!
James Barnes: Hi.
Tara McGowan: Hey guys. So glad you're here. So to go ahead and get started, I would love for you both to tell us a little bit about yourself and the role that you had at Facebook. And then we can, we can dive into 2016 and and bring us all the way back to 2020. So, Tatenda let's start with you. You and I actually worked very closely together in 2016.
Tatenda Musapatike: Yes. So I was actually on the IE side.
Tara McGowan: What is the IE side, Tatenda?
Tatenda Musapatike: The independent expenditure side. So I didn't work directly with the campaigns, but that's how we met.
Tara McGowan: And what was that role like?
Tatenda Musapatike: It was a lot of things. So, Facebook sales team for politics operated similarly to how any sales team works at an online ad company. So we viewed ourselves as people who are there to help provide assistance with the platform, strategic guidance where possible to advocate for our clients internally to help produce products that met their needs, but then also to advocate for policies that they may need or, basically act as a voice for the industry to the company, but also act as the voice of the company to the industry. Which, at 2016 I would say, it was a lot easier than after 2016.
Tara McGowan: And yes, and to put it from the client perspective, when I was running the digital program at priorities and you were my account representative from Facebook, what you also were to me at least was, you know, the foremost expert on the platform that we were spending a lot of money on and a lot of time on trying to reach and engage voters. And so really as you mentioned, advocating, um, to your how best to use the platform to meet their objectives, whatever those objectives are. Um, as well as of course, advocating on your client's behalf to the platform itself, which, you know, you only have so much control over with the company's largest Facebook, but yet you are a very strong advocate for our work. So I appreciate that. So, Tatenda, do you want to introduce your colleague from Facebook?
Tatenda Musapatike: Sure. So James was my colleague on the Republican team. We were complete opposites. He was a client solutions manager for the candidate side on Republicans. We had the same job, but I did independent expenditures and James worked for the Trump campaign during that time. And you know, I didn't see that much of him in the office during those days, which probably was for the better.
Tara McGowan:
And I did not even know James' name in 2016, which was probably -
James Barnes: By design?
Tatenda Musapatike: We didn't talk about you much to our side.
Tara McGowan: So James, introduce yourself to our audience.
James Barnes: My name is James. I'm working on measurement and analytics here at ACRONYM, which is a thing that I've been doing off and on through my time at Facebook for like six years. As Tatenda mentioned I was the Facebooker inside the Trump campaign in 2016. A lot has changed since then. I am 100% committed to getting Trump out of office in this next year. And I'm just so happy to have found a home at ACRONYM, and colleagues like Tara and Tatenda to do this with. I think the work's really important and I am really excited about the momentum that we have been able to produce in the past few months towards that goal.
Tara McGowan: So I'm going to channel what I imagine a number of our listeners are thinking right now and asking themselves and just ask you to tell us a little bit about what you went through, um, during your time on the Trump campaign. But even more importantly afterwards that led you to the point where you are now working for a very progressive organization whose primary mission, Though not sole mission, but primary mission is to make sure that Trump does not get a second term. So let's, let's get into it.
James Barnes: Yeah. So I think, you know, I joined Facebook in June of 2013 and I think my objective in joining Facebook was really to figure out how this company and this platform which was growing sort of like wildfire could continue to accomplish its mission, which was to connect the world, and the realm, which I knew a lot about which was politics and digital organizing. I had come from a Republican digital consulting background, had been involved in college and the College Republicans, uh, grew up in the South, grew up going to an evangelical church, and sort of had this linear path, through my sort of adolescence and then on to college and adulthood of being sort of a committed or professional Republican. And so it really led me to that point when I was at this digital consulting firm working with Republican clients and I'd started to get good at Facebook marketing. Facebook offered me a job. It was my dream job. I was really excited about,the possibilities of what we could do to really use Facebook as a platform to allow people to have voice in elections. You know, I worked as Tatenda mentioned, on Tatenda's team doing a lot of the same work that she did. We collaborated a lot on what types of products we needed to build. What was the ideal strategy to raise money versus persuade people versus get them out to vote. How do we turn that into a narrative? How do we turn that into a set of strategies that people can use? And I did that work, uh, across not just Republican candidates or causes, but really contributed to a broader platform that we are trying to build for anybody, you know, from dog catcher to president to be able to use our platform to run their campaigns. So then fast forward to 2015, we have this objective to turn Facebook into what we were calling the Facebook election. I'm traveling around the country, meeting with candidates.
Tatenda Musapatike: Ben Carson was the man.
James Barnes: I went to Akron, Ohio to Ben Carson's marketing agency and helped them out with their, you know, direct response strategies. We were literally all over the place. We went through these kind of, I don't even think I've thought about that.
Tatenda Musapatike: I will never forget that moment that like someone was supporting a black candidate before me on that platform. It was wild.
James Barnes: Oh my God, I didn't even, I never would've thought about that.
Tatenda Musapatike: Yeah.
James Barnes: That's interesting.
Tatenda Musapatike: I think about it a lot.
Tara McGowan: So you're going around the country. At that point, there's like, I don't know, 17, 15 Republican candidates.
James Barnes: There were 1,715 Republican candidates, yeah.
Tara McGowan: Not so dissimilar than the Democratic primary we're in right now.
Tatenda Musapatike: It was a lot less. That's what's also kind of crazy about it. I remember making fun of the whole situation. I was like, y'all, like I just got here cause I started in 2015 there's like fifty-leven, you know, there's fifty-leven Republicans running. One of them's a black guy named Ben Carson, who was a renowned surgeon who's just spending on this platform. What is happening right now?!
Tara McGowan: So there's all these candidates you're traveling around on behalf of Facebook to try and kind of support all of them or the ones who want the support, right on the platform yet. Okay. And so the, you know, the field winnows. Take us to the point at which Trump is the nominee.
James Barnes: Well, so like that spring we had not really talked with their campaign at all. And so I think, you know, over the time where we were supporting all these other candidates, not because for lack of effort, they just weren't responsive. We were trying to give everyone, you know -
Tara McGowan: There might not have been a campaign staff at that point.
James Barnes: I think we had a few meetings with their folks, and you know, in June, and the RNC who had taken up a lot of the operational and executional responsibilities for the general election campaign asked if I would come down to San Antonio, Texas, where Trump's digital campaign manager Brad Parscale had an agency and asked if I'd help launch their fundraising. And so I went down and -
Tara McGowan: Was this at the time yet referred to as Project Alamo?
James Barnes: I don't remember when that name popped up. It wasn't like, you know, somebody was like, we've got Project Alamo, can you come?
Tara McGowan: That is kind of how I imagined it.
James Barnes: The password is, Remember the Alamo. It's not a very good password. But you know, I was down there and we worked on the fundraising and I think once I got down there in June, I was pretty much there every week through through October working on scaling the fundraising program and helping them learn how to persuade people and do get out the vote. And basically just working across all of their objectives as a campaign.
Tara McGowan: And at that point in time, James, was there a team, was there a strategy that you, that you were helping work to implement?
James Barnes: Well, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, any campaign, at the beginning, the first thing that they're going to want to do is raise money. And so with Trump, this was this interesting challenge because like, he didn't have an email list. He'd never raised money before. He didn't come from the political establishment. He didn't have an agency that had a lot of, you know, other clients that they could share from. It was just a really blank slate. But obviously he didn't start with nothing. He had this really engaged following online. He was really posting a lot of engaging content and commanded just this enormous amount of the online conversation. As you can imagine, an enormous amount of the overall conversation in the country. What we found from the beginning was that we were able to take that energy, that organic engagement, that enthusiasm that he was attracting on Facebook. And we were able to turn that into dollars pretty quickly by remarketing the people who'd engaged with him on his posts and asking for them to give money. So I think fundraising was really the first objective there and they got moving really fast and we're printing money I think pretty quickly after we got there.
Tara McGowan: I want to zoom out for a minute because something that I know is a common kind of misperception that was played out by the media after the election was that you know, Facebook had given special treatment to the Trump campaign, which you were the special treatment James. And that the Hillary Clinton campaign was not given the same treatment or the same capacity from Facebook as the Trump campaign, which was actually not true. Tatenda can you speak to that a little bit because I'm constantly correcting this record to folks, but I think it's important.
Tatenda Musapatike: Thank you for correcting it. And it's something that, it kind of confounded me and I think the term "embed", especially now that I'm no longer there, people ask me like, Oh, you were an embed, I'm like, that's the best way to describe it, so people know, but we weren't embeds. I think it was a misconception that clients on the political side, one got to pick who their people were or that, you know, they had special access to a certain tool. We worked, the reason why James and I were able to know each other more closely is because we really worked to make sure that we had an equal offering to all sides and equal availability. Like nothing made me happier in those days. And when someone came to me, and Kay, it was always you who said, here's the goal. How should I be thinking about this on the platform? Just because that's what we were there to do. We were there to help people on our respective sides, in our respective books of business, as we called them, execute the best campaigns. And so people had equal access to the same numbers of people. We made sure that the same volume of people were supporting each of the different businesses. We made sure that each of the products, we were all aligned on what was, what and how the narrative was to the market and how we would bring it to the market. Even when we would send the emails about the thing to the market, it just was not adopted on the left as it was on the right. And I think that's very much so due to when you have establishment figures and you aren't the underdogs, there's more to throw at the wall because you have less to lose. And so, we, I think if you look at the primary, you saw Bernie Sanders using the platform in a very innovative way and taking advantage of the platform in a way because they had nothing to lose. They were looking for how can we best use this platform to our advantage. And they made a lot of really interesting use cases, especially for fundraising on the platform. That was really cool to see coming from the left. You saw less of that level of interaction. Um, I think on the presidential level just because there were established ways of doing things and I think as Democrats were really, really cautious to change, I think to our detriment. And it was, it was a frustrating time in that regard, especially to volume of spend because Trump through most of his money to digital, there was no TV spending, if I'm remembering correctly. It was very little.
Tara McGowan: Yeah. And to sort of sum that up since the three of us lived through it, but our listeners didn't, Is that really Facebook offered the same access to support to both campaigns and to groups and organizations like Priorities USA on both sides. And the reason Tatenda that you and I actually got to know each other and work really closely together speaks to part of the difference culturally on the left, which was that there are a lot of there's a lot of middlemen and -
Tatenda Musapatike: They are literal men.
Tara McGowan: They are men, for the most part. But truly there is a consultant class and digital agencies that do most of the digital advertising program work on behalf of campaigns and organizations. And they really serve as the gatekeepers to platforms like ,Facebook and Google. And so the clients, whether it's the campaigns or myself running a digital program at Priorities are working with agencies and consultants who are working with the platforms like Facebook. And so I only really got to know you and Kaiya and Kay really closely because I demanded access because I wanted to understand if I was running a smarter program on Facebook. And so we were able to do more and scratch the surface, just barely, on driving some more innovation on the platform through our program work in our collaboration. But that wasn't necessarily something that the campaign wanted or felt they needed access to because they had an in-house buying team. Now going back to you, James, this was culturally very different than the Trump campaign, as the Trump campaign is culturally different than most environments I imagine. But speak a little bit to that. Like they accepted the offer by Facebook to have actual support in house for what reason do you think?
James Barnes: Well, I think necessity like necessity is the mother of all invention. I think that they didn't have staff, they didn't have priors. They didn't have infrastructure, they didn't have any of these things.
Tara McGowan: They didn't have a clear path. Right? This is a totally unusual, unorthodox candidate.
James Barnes: We had to tend to and other members of our team, and I had spent years mapping out what is the sort of strategy that we think that the ideal candidate would use using all the products that we have and using all of the sort of thinking that we've done. And so we kinda came ready with that playbook. We'd written it. We, and I think when you're a campaign who doesn't have an established way of doing things and someone who, all they think about is this platform comes to you and say, Hey, like I think I have a way that we could do this. And it's not like we just made it up. It's something that we spent years building a readymade out of the box. We can do it. Not to say it was easy, it wasn't, but I think that was really attractive to them.
Tara McGowan: Absolutely. And it's one of those things that when you and I met James, one of the things that really struck me and created a common language and common understanding between us was this conversation of how it was different on Trump's campaign. Man, it really resonated to me because I felt like I'd been working against the barriers of cultural inertia. The consultant class on the left, just over-reliance on conventional wisdom, and risk aversion on the left and, and it's, it's what really all of those things together are part of the fabric that really kind of pushed me to start ACRONYM was to create a different kind of space and a different culture that really did emphasize and encourage and invest in and nurture the ability to innovate, to experiment, to take risks so we could evolve our model and build power. And you spoke about how it was a very open and curious and risk-taking culture that you entered on the Trump campaign.
James Barnes: I mean, we've got to give credit where credit is due, right. And I think in that sense, I don't know the actual numbers, they probably had what, like 1/10th, 1/20th of the staff of the Clinton campaign. You know people have titles on the Clinton campaign, like assistant deputy organizer for this specific precinct in Florida. They don't have that, you know, they're trying to figure out where their office is in Florida and it's like, hi, I'm the Florida person. Nice to meet you. That's kind of the situation. And so in a scenario like that where you have a few people, those people are empowered. There are, there's less expectation, there's less priors or less cooks in the kitchen and less voices. If you have creative people who are interested in trying out a different way, you can go a really long way. And I think, you know, there was, and still is sort of a conflict inside of me where I remember that period is being often sort of deeply conflicted and painful and all of these adjectives that aren't super great. But I also remember, there's a certain sense of working with people who like just get it and, and sense of joy that comes from doing work that is just good, that can be like completely divorced from the outcome of the work because you just understand that you're experiencing something that doesn't happen that often. And then it's something that is a really rare peek at what people can do when they kind of put their egos on the table and they say like, I don't know how we did this before, but I'm really committed to figuring out how we're gonna make it work better. And so that was I think, a key tension for me, which was the recognition that what I was seeing was different and unique and special at the same time. While I felt this conflict about, you know, working for the campaign of a person who I personally despised. I think one thing I want to be really clear on is that like I voted for Hillary Clinton. I despised Donald Trump from the moment I learned of him and my commitment in the 2016 election had much less to do with supporting him or his platform and a lot more to do with supporting Facebook's commitment to democracy and providing the sort of equal services that Tatenda mentioned earlier in the podcast, so like all the people in this room, and for similar and different reasons, I was absolutely devastated and crushed the morning after the election, I knew my life, both personally, but then the, the sort of path that our country was on and it was just changed fundamentally. And I knew that I was going to have to come to terms with what happened and kind of chart my own path going forward. And then ultimately that path of, you know, two and a half years following the election was, was pretty tough. It took a lot of soul searching and a lot of carrying the baggage of what happened, helping sort through this stuff for the company and helping sort through stuff for often, you know, the government. And so it was, it was really, really a tough period of time. But I think, you know, that time gave me clarity. And that clarity was that while I think in 2016, I think I was supporting the values of like a platform that could sort of support our democracy, the values that I needed to support going forward with the values that I cared about, which was making sure that people, lived in a freer, like kinder, more fair and equal society. And so you mentioned I'm working for a very progressive organization. I think I would characterize my values as very progressive. I think it took me some time to kind of shape that diamond out of the rough. But I'm glad it happened and everything happens for a reason, and here we are.
Tara McGowan: Yeah. And I just want to say, cause you know, none of this is light is like as somebody and I know Tatenda feels the same, who did everything in our control and power to try to make sure that Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election, the crushing blow that that loss was. To have played a role in her, not winning that election had to be so much more complicated given what you just expressed about your feelings about Trump. So I give you a lot of credit for being very honest and open about this. I hope that you just write the memoir about it for all of our listeners, but since we are focused kind of on the tactics and how the digital space and social media have really changed our politics. Obviously 2016 was a moment where I think that became something that, that became part of the national conversation. Right? Suddenly we had a president who did invest more in Facebook than any candidate I believe before that had, and invested far less in television than any candidate for president ever had. And you know, also there was Russian interference on the Facebook platform and, you know, Facebook made a number of changes after the election. And I'm curious, I would like to bring us now to like the present day, right? You both are at ACRONYM. You're both working hard on programs, that we are putting forward to get Trump out of office, which is not only an absolute 180 from the work that you did James, in, in 2016. But also the platform has changed and continues to be very powerful. And so I would love, maybe Tatenda you can start, just talk a little bit about how the platform's changed and how you see its role in campaigns and in voter contact today.
Tatenda Musapatike: Yeah, I think having been a representative of the company to the industry and vice versa through 2017 and 2018 as those changes were made, it's really complicated for me. I think one, especially in 2016, plenty of people in our party were very aggrieved by the things that the platform got wrong. I think that Facebook had an arrogance about it at the time that I don't think we all could see clearly until after we clearly understood what had happened.
Tara McGowan: I also think it's pretty clear now.
Tatenda Musapatike: Yeah. I also think though, and one thing I think is important to note, is I think there's this narrative that, you know, the is not doing anything or they don't care. I don't think I've ever met people more passionate about trying to fix the problems as Facebook than some of the people inside of Facebook, which is why the simplification or vilification of the platform is really difficult for me to swallow because people are attacking a problem that they may not fully understand, which I fully blame the media for not fully educating people, which then leads us down a road where, how are we supposed to advocate for our privacy rights or for the how the platform should interact with the public if we're not having a fully informed media and electorate about those things because we're simplifying the nugget into easily digestible pieces of vilification, beause there are certainly many things the platform's gotten wrong. I don't think most people fully understand what they are. That being said -
Tara McGowan: I think a lot of that also just, you know, just to play devil's advocate extends from the power, right? With great power comes great responsibility and Facebook has become a very powerful global platform with incredible reach with incredible data and insights about us. And so it is tough and that's why the information and the narrative is really critically important. I absolutely agree with that. And I think, you know, it doesn't mean that everything they do is right or thoughtful. It doesn't mean that they didn't create some of the problems they now have to solve for. But I think you're absolutely right that the actual people and individuals like both of you are inherently good and want to fix this, right? And so I think that's really important. You know, we're now, Facebook has become a household name with I think a lot of negative connotation. And I do think scrutiny is really important. We also need regulation. This is like uncharted territory. Social media and technology as places and vehicles for mass communication and influence, right? But that means that we actually need regulation. And right now Facebook and other platforms are regulating themselves.
Tatenda Musapatike: Which leads to a problem. And I also think if we're going to care both about innovation and having smaller players be able to come up in the game and we want them to be able to have different forms of advertising and we as advertisers want to be able to use them. We need to have constant regulation because the cost of implementing the self regulation is astronomical. No one's making money off politics across the industry, but at the same time, as much as I can say all of these things, it's also true that like this whole decision about not regulating the truth of political actors on the platform is a fucking dumpster fire.
Tara McGowan: To say the least.
Tatenda Musapatike: It's in my opinion, hot garbage.
Tara McGowan: Right, and to be clear, that is the very strong position of each of us and ACRONYM that Facebook should drop the policy to allow politicians to lie through advertisements on the platform.
Tatenda Musapatike: If we want to talk about the First Amendment and how important it is to give people voice, the First Amendment only exists in healthy democracies. Healthy democracies don't exist where we allow for propaganda to be spit from dictators. That's how they get power. So you can't make a political argument about the First Amendment without first addressing how we protect that First Amendment and our democracies. So Mark, change your mind, step one! Also step two, I think there are a lot of questions to be said about how is it that we go about regulating political advertising. If we are using models of regulation that are based on television and radio, we're never going to get it right. And as Democrats, we tend to rely on the traditional media. We're slow to innovate and therefore we just adopt what we already know without thinking through the consequences. And I think that's translated through the policies we're seeing regulated in states like Washington where if you're going to say that you have to put a price of a piece of content, but the price is auction based, we don't know the price. So how are we going to do that? So we need to be thinking about how these platforms can be regulated in a smart way, but also like all of these politicians make their money on the platform. So why are we biting the hand that feeds us?
Tara McGowan: These are not simple problems. They cannot have simple solutions, which is why conversation and dialogue and folks from inside the industry and the platforms from outside of it need to need to get at the same table and have these conversations. And I think that's so important. So I know that we do not have a ton more time. I do want to ask, you know, James, why did you join ACRONYM and why was it so important to you to work towards making sure Donald Trump is not re-elected?
James Barnes: You know, I think the reason that you created ACRONYM, which is to create this sort of long-term incubator for progressive technology innovation is sorely needed. I think that building infrastructure, both like financial, legal, technological people, to accomplish big goals, which the goals that we are attacking are nothing but big, is really necessary. And so I think I kind of saw the things I love so much about the Facebook culture inside of ACRONYM. And I'm really excited about the work we have yet to do. I think the goals and challenges are huge, but that's the only thing I've ever wanted to work on. Look, I think every person in our democracy, as a citizen in the country, has the right and the duty, every time an election comes up to contribute in a way that reflects their values. And that contribution could be voting for candidates that reflect your values. It could also be using the talents and the experience that you have or the financial resources that you have to do that. And so I, for better or for worse, have a unique set of experiences and skills and talents that came out of 2016 and my time after that. And, thankfully, because, you know, of people like you and others in my network, like I've got the opportunity to go employ those in a way that I think is really meaningful. And so I guess an admonition that I've been giving to a lot of folks is like, especially like swing voters, you know, it's like that guy doesn't deserve your vote. You don't have to vote for the guy this year just because you did last time. Like, this is, this is something that needs to be earned. And certainly he came nowhere close to earning my vote either time, but he's not, you know, not only that, he's earned the opposite of that, which is my dedicated effort to help defeat him.
Tara McGowan: And I appreciate that and I appreciate both of you because I think something else that's really important to be able to continually drive innovation and impact is to hire and work with people much smarter than yourself, of which I put you both in that class and in that category. And, and yeah, whether you love Facebook, you hate Facebook, you're on Facebook, you're not on Facebook. Unfortunately, Facebook is one of the most powerful platforms and channels. We have to reach people and we do not come to the defense of it lightly. It's kind of like air, unfortunately right now. And so until there is regulation, we've got to use it in the smartest, most effective and compliant ways possible, especially because of the policy we don't agree with that, politicians can lie and we will not. We will not ever spread misinformation on it because I don't believe that we need to, to beat Trump, but we will use it and we will use it in the smartest ways possible. And I think that's a huge credit to both of you.
Tatenda Musapatike: No need to bring a knife to a gunfight. You have to win in order to regulate shit.
Tara McGowan: Exactly. Let's get in power and then let's have these debates. Well thank you guys both so much for sharing with our listeners and for being on the team.
James Barnes: Thank you.
Tatenda Musapatike: Thanks Tara!
Tara McGowan: Okay, that's it for this week. To listen to previous episodes, please head to fwiwpodcast.com. And we have a quick programming note this week before we sign off. For What It's Worth is going to be taking a break for the Thanksgiving holiday and holiday breaks are something we're very thankful for in this critical period and political climate. So, we will talk to you all again on December 5th. Thanks as always for listening.