• by Colin Kirkland , August 14, 2024

President Joe Biden and his administration invited a group of 100 digital content creators to the White House on Wednesday to discuss issues within the creator economy, including privacy, fair pay, AI, mental health and the overall impact of social media on the future of communication in news and politics.

“The innovative entrepreneurial spirit in this room is what makes America America,” Biden told the room of influencers -- adding that politics has never seemed so volatile.

“It’s getting incredibly difficult to count the number of lies people hear -- they don’t know what to believe. They don’t know what to count on,” he said. “But you break through -- you break through in ways that I think are going to change the entire dynamic in the ways in which we communicate.”

Biden told the group of creators that they have an obligation to record what they think is true, despite the ways in which American society has “divided into competing camps.”

Attending the first-ever White House Creator Conference -- hosted by the Office of Digital Strategy -- were other top officials including Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo and White House domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden.

As the creator economy continues to grow -- Goldman Sachs it is now worth about $250 billion, and estimates that it will double over the next few years -- influencers and social-media platforms are set to become even more essential and influential in political strategy and policy-making.

In 2021, Biden's administration worked alongside influencers to help persuade people to get vaccinated for COVID-19, and in the following year, briefed 30 top TikTok stars on the war in Ukraine after millions turned to the short-form video app to gain insight on the developing conflict with Russia.

Biden also considered the idea of designating a White House press briefing room to a group of social-media influencers, including some with large TikTok followings, in an attempt to reach younger voters in the upcoming presidential election.

By formally inviting influencers into the home of American politics, the Biden administration is setting a new precedent.

“These events ensure creators are given a voice in D.C. that more traditional entertainment and media groups have had for decades,” Franklin Graves, a tech policy lawyer attending the conference, told CNBC.

“The law and policy issues facing creators, brands, and platforms in the creator economy are much more nuanced and often unaddressed by existing regulations or agency actions,” Graves added.

“The biggest thing you got going for you, and I hope you keep it, is you’re trusted,” Biden said at the end of his introductory speech. “You’re trusted. And it makes the difference.”

Yet Biden has faced widespread backlash from creators for signing a bill to sell off, or potentially ban, TikTok -- one of the most popular social-media platforms among younger voters in the U.S.

Now, however, with Vice President Kamala Harris running in the 2024 presidential election instead of Biden, things could change. Harris’ TikTok account and her campaign’s embrace of online meme culture have attracted notable engagement and attention from young people in the past few weeks.

“We would just like to see a change in ownership,” a Harris campaign spokesperson told Axios at the start of the month, despite TikTok’s insistence that selling off the platform to another owner would be near impossible.