When Kat Abughazaleh bought laid off from her job as an extremism researcher and video producer at Media Matters final yr, Elon Musk personally chimed in on X to have a good time her misfortune.
“Karma is actual,” Musk stated.
But as Abughazaleh stated in a video on Monday saying her marketing campaign for Congress, she’s not afraid of standing as much as Musk, particularly as his affect on the federal authorities escalates.
Instead, the 26-year-old has her eye on Illinois’ Ninth District. The present consultant, the 80-year-old Democrat Jan Schakowsky, was first elected to Congress earlier than Abughazaleh was even born.
“I’ve concepts that I wish to push, and I’ve an enormous [social media] platform,” Abughazaleh informed TechCrunch on Monday. “I felt I didn’t wish to wait round for somebody to do one thing after I may do one thing proper now.”
Abughazaleh constructed her on-line viewers via her work at Media Matters, the place she grew to become identified for making movies decoding the rhetoric and inaccuracies of Fox News. But when Musk sued Media Matters over an article about how X positioned ads alongside pro-Nazi content material, the mounting authorized prices led the non-profit to put off Abughazaleh and twelve others.
Now an impartial social media creator, she has amassed over half 1,000,000 followers throughout platforms for her progressive political content material, together with her largest viewers (222,000 followers) on TikTok.
“There is totally no motive you shouldn’t have the ability to afford housing, groceries, and healthcare with some cash leftover,” she stated in her marketing campaign announcement. “Families ought to have free childcare, Social Security must be expanded, and our inalienable rights shouldn’t be depending on who’s in energy.”
Abughazaleh didn’t anticipate her run-ins with Musk to be relatable to the broader public. But over ten months after Musk celebrated her layoff, over 30,000 federal staff now know the sensation of shedding their jobs because of the billionaire’s machinations.
“Lots of people in journalism, particularly on this disinformation beat, have been going via sort of a trial interval, or a apply run, a dry run of what Trump and Musk have been doing to the remainder of the nation,” she informed TechCrunch.
“We knew what was going to occur… We are upset that we’re proper, however that additionally signifies that we now have instruments to combat again and know what’s taking place and know find out how to deal with it.”
A TikToker turned political candidate
While younger individuals have traditionally leaned liberal, Gen Z voters shifted extra conservative in final yr’s election. Abughazaleh thinks this a product of poor outreach from Democrats.
“I believe the massive downside Democrats have is their digital technique, and folks like me and folks which might be youthful have a greater understanding [of the internet],” she stated. “It’s one thing that we grew up with.”
Some critics might imagine her age is a double-edged sword since she’s younger sufficient to have a prolonged on-line footprint. But Abughazaleh isn’t nervous. As she wrote to 1 skeptic on X, “I hope you take pleasure in my center faculty One Direction fan weblog and footage of my cat.”
In the period of Trump — the president actually owns a social media platform the place he posts continuously — it’s not so taboo anymore to point out persona on-line.
“We have a president that posts no matter involves his thoughts at any time,” she stated. “I believe that we’re positive with identical to, having a presence from age 13.”
Given her historical past with Musk, she isn’t planning to heart X in her digital technique. Above all different social media platforms, Abughazaleh is prioritizing Bluesky, the place she has round 154,000 followers.
On Monday, for instance, she posted her marketing campaign announcement completely on Bluesky for an hour and a half earlier than shifting to different platforms.
“I actually like Bluesky’s insurance policies on a variety of of issues,” she stated. “They’re hiring extra moderators, and a variety of different locations aren’t moderating, or are firing moderators.”
Meta, as an example, overhauled its content material moderation insurance policies in January, ending its third-party fact-checking program.
Bluesky has grown to over 33 million customers, and even former president Barack Obama joined the platform over the weekend. But its inhabitants continues to be comparatively small in comparison with longstanding social giants like Instagram or X.
Regardless, Abughazaleh’s technique has confirmed profitable so far. In the primary seven hours of her marketing campaign, she raised $100,000 with a median contribution of $45.
“We’ve gotten probably the most donations on social media from Bluesky up to now out of some other platform,” Abughazaleh informed TechCrunch.
Abughazaleh can be enthusiastic in regards to the open supply nature of Bluesky. She’s attempting to echo that transparency on her YouTube channel, the place she plans to share movies documenting her marketing campaign expertise.
“I’m tying to be actually clear about find out how to run for workplace, as a result of I really feel prefer it’s sort of this black gap that appears much more tough than it must be,” she stated.
Even if she doesn’t win a seat in Congress, she hopes that her openness about this course of will encourage different gen Z candidates to run.
“If this marketing campaign goes as deliberate, I might be the youngest lady elected to Congress,” she stated. “But I believe it will be cool if we had one other candidate that got here in and was even youthful than me.”
