After several weeks of top social media companies making overtures to President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, Democrats are starting to worry: Are the most powerful online platforms becoming hostile to their politics? And can they do anything about it if they are?
NOTUS spoke with more than a dozen strategists, media buyers, lawmakers and Democratic-allied decision-makers who are involved in active conversations about how to adapt to what they see as a changing social media landscape. Social media is an increasingly important part of campaign activities and a place where Democrats spend big money trying to move the needle in their direction. There’s now worry that work is about to become harder, but they acknowledge their only real option is to wait and see.
The bind Democrats are in was neatly illustrated by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the party’s most social media-savvy players, who spent time last week fuming in an Instagram story that “every mass social media platform in the United States has been taken over by the right wing.”
AOC told NOTUS she was concerned about the social media landscape, but she said she had no choice but to post through it. A change in habits could cede important organizing space, she reasoned.
“I think increasingly some of them are less reliable,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But I don’t think we run away from them.”
For Democrats facing the whirlwind opening weeks of the GOP trifecta, concerns over social media companies became another in a long list of realities they need to grapple with.
“It’s still in early stages, and among 10,000 of the incoming things in the Trump era people need to deal with,” veteran Democratic strategist Eddie Vale told NOTUS. “But I think it’s going to become bigger and more discussed as time goes on.”
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Instagram’s parent company, Meta, has made efforts to endear himself to MAGA lately, Democrats say. In the days before the inauguration, he announced significant policy changes at Meta that were seen as friendly to the right. Meta also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and Zuckerberg took a prime seat in the audience.
While Democrats are concerned about multiple platforms right now, Meta has drawn ire because of Zuckerberg’s recent public statements. Meta declined to speak on the record to NOTUS for this story. The company’s public position is that anyone engaged in political work will benefit from the recent policy changes, regardless of party — more space for political speech means more space for political campaigning.
Meta and other social media companies are no strangers to partisan complaints — Meta platforms specifically came under fire from conservatives for its moderation policies for years. Zuckerberg nodded at some of them when he announced the move of content moderation from the company’s California home to Texas, which he said would result in “less concern about the bias of our teams.” Democrats do not feel statements like that are aimed at making them feel welcome.
Complaints have roiled online at Zuckerberg, and the early transition to the latest policy changes he promised for Meta has been bumpy. Last week, staff took to social media to beat back claims it was boosting Trump content and making it harder to find Democratic-leaning posts. The fury aside, data so far suggests they’re not going anywhere.
Some of the Democratic operative complaints about the company are not new either. Democrats were angry at Meta’s political ad policies in 2022, and many operatives said they had spent less on Meta platforms since then. But, like the upset users, they say they are not going anywhere for the moment.
“A lot of people still use Meta and will continue to use Meta and other social media platforms,” Rep. Shomari Figures said. “We have to make sure that we’re using it responsibly in a responsible fashion to continue to get out a responsible message.”
Veteran online spenders say that they’re also warning Democrats away from leaving Meta, even as it drops in priority for some groups.
“The biggest thing that I am trying to keep is a level head about it is, ‘Is there an actual conspiracy that is happening that we can make all these decisions based on things that we don’t know?’” said Gavrie Kullman of Battleaxe Digital, which has worked on digital campaigns for Democratic candidates.
Priorities USA, an outside spending group that has supported Democrats for years, shifted all its focus to digital years ago, pouring its resources into building out programs utilizing influencers and other social media-native content. Nick Ahamed, the group’s deputy executive director, told NOTUS the group will keep spending on Meta platforms, though the amount has steadily declined in recent years.
“In a cycle like 2020, Meta may have been our number one platform or very close to our number one platform,” Ahamed told NOTUS. “That was certainly not the case in 2024.” They’ll be tracking user engagement on Meta heading into the next cycle when planning future investment.
Asked about Democratic engagement, a spokesperson for the video-sharing app Trump now says he’s a fan of told NOTUS, “TikTok doesn’t accept political advertising.” Bluesky, the new darling platform for progressives, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Other Democrats NOTUS talked to now spend much more on YouTube and digital streaming service ads than they do on Meta.
“You’re getting a better audience, and you’re getting better impressions because people are actually paying attention since they’re about to watch a video,” one strategist who works on statewide Democratic campaigns said.
Ahamed and other operatives said they have not heard from Meta about the program changes or any other direct efforts to reassure them or keep their business. Meta did not respond to a question about its recent communications with Democratic advertisers.
The worst-case scenario for Democrats going forward is for more platforms to look like X, which is now owned and chaotically controlled by Elon Musk. With social media companies seemingly eager to impress the new leadership in the White House, Democrats think others are following suit.
“We’ve seen what happens when there is a platform, like Twitter to X, that’s allowed to run rampant,” Melissa Balduff, a Democratic strategist in Wisconsin, told NOTUS.
The fears about the future of social media and politics come just as Democrats are engaged in a fulsome self-examination, wondering how to become relevant again in the minds of voters they lost in 2024.
While he was signing executive orders on his first night in office, Trump riffed to reporters about the state of social media and politics.
“I guess I have a warm spot for TikTok that I didn’t have originally,” Trump said, pointing to the support he gained among young people. “You know I went on TikTok and I won young people by 36%.”
That’s not true — current analysis shows Trump lost the youth vote in 2024 just as he did in 2016 and 2020. But he made huge inroads with an electorate generally turned off to Republicans. Democrats say part of that is because conservatives have created an ecosystem they envy.
“What the right has done well is create top of the funnel, nonpolitical sort of values- or entertainment-based entry points for that algorithmic push,” Ahamed said, referring to broad audience personalities like Joe Rogan. “One of the things that the left needs to do is understand that that’s how the internet works, and create our own values space and entertainment-based entries to a funnel for us to be able to eventually have more political conversations with viewers.”
But there’s also a structural problem, other Democrats argue.
“Investing in ads where the backend and the algorithm is controlled by our enemy, political opposition, is a little weird,” Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution told NOTUS.
Accountable Tech, a progressive-leaning advocacy organization long at the crux of conversations like this, made a push during Joe Biden’s term for Democrats to increase regulation of social media. It warned against data mining and algorithms that work to keep users’ attention with more controversial, extreme and often just plain incorrect content.
“These platforms are all just monopolies,” Nicole Gill, the group’s co-founder, told NOTUS. She pointed to the attendance by platform owners at Trump’s inauguration. “All of these sites have a bent, and I think we’re going to see more and more of that come through as they do away with all their already limited content moderation guidelines and fact-checking.”
Gill said her outreach plans have not included paid advertising on Facebook for a long time.
“We’re starting to invest more and more time into Bluesky like everyone else,” she said. “I guess we’ll see how that goes.”
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Evan McMorris-Santoro is a reporter at NOTUS. Tinashe Chingarande and Torrence Banks are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.