An OnlyFans Creator Was Paid by the Biden Administration to Post Political Content — Here's What That Means for the Creator Economy
In a 2024 interview with commentator Richard Hanania, OnlyFans personality and social media creator Farha Khalidi described how she transitioned from brand deals and dating app sponsorships into paid political content — eventually producing posts commissioned by the Biden administration itself.
"I was doing full-on political propaganda," Khalidi said. She described a specific instance where a team working with Biden's political operation sent her a script about Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court nomination. A white woman on the team wanted Khalidi — who is of Middle Eastern descent — to record a video saying she felt "reflected" by Jackson's confirmation. Khalidi declined to use the script as written, calling it inauthentic.
But she still did the post. She still got paid. And her followers — overwhelmingly young women who followed her for lifestyle and adult content — had no indication that what they were watching was a political advertisement purchased by a presidential administration.
This article isn't about Farha Khalidi's politics. It's about what her story reveals about the creator economy — how political campaigns have learned to weaponize the trust between creators and their audiences, why disclosure rules haven't kept up, and what this means for every creator, brand, and marketing agency operating in influencer marketing today.
Who Is Farha Khalidi — and How Did She End Up Doing Political Ads?
Khalidi's path from college student to OnlyFans creator to paid political content producer mirrors thousands of creators in the modern influencer pipelineFarha Khalidi built her following the way most modern creators do — through a combination of lifestyle content, personality-driven social media posts, and eventually, adult content on OnlyFans. By the time she graduated college, she had a large enough audience that brands were paying her for sponsored posts. **The Brand Deal Pipeline** What Khalidi described to Hanania is a pipeline that thousands of mid-tier creators experience: you build a following around personality and lifestyle content, brands notice your engagement metrics, and agencies start reaching out. First it's dating apps and beauty products. Then nonprofits. Then political organizations. By Khalidi's own account, she was doing paid posts for **Planned Parenthood**, various progressive nonprofits, and eventually the **Biden administration** — all through the same influencer marketing pipeline that had previously sold her audience on dating apps. **The Key Insight** Khalidi's story matters not because she's unique, but because she's *typical*. The infrastructure that connects political campaigns to creators is the same infrastructure that connects consumer brands to creators. The same agencies, the same dashboards, the same per-post pricing models. The only difference is the product being sold: instead of a dating app, it's a political message. Instead of a coupon code, it's a talking point. And the audience — the creator's followers — experience both the same way: as authentic content from someone they trust. **The Script She Declined** The most revealing detail in Khalidi's account is the script. A white woman working with Biden's team sent her pre-written copy about Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court nomination, asking Khalidi to say she felt "reflected" by Jackson's confirmation. Khalidi — who is not Black — recognized the absurdity and declined to read the script verbatim. But she still produced the content. She still got paid. And the underlying transaction — a political campaign purchasing the appearance of grassroots creator enthusiasm — still happened.
Source: Farha Khalidi interview with Richard Hanania, April 2024The Political Influencer Machine: How Campaigns Buy "Organic" Creator Content
The Biden campaign spent $1.4 million on influencer content in a single FEC filing period — and that's only what was disclosedKhalidi's admission didn't surface in a vacuum. It confirmed what political operatives, digital strategists, and FEC watchdogs had been documenting for years: **political campaigns have built sophisticated influencer marketing operations** that function identically to consumer brand campaigns — but with far less transparency. **How It Works** Political campaigns and PACs hire intermediary agencies — firms like Village Marketing, Viral Nation, or specialized political influencer shops — to identify creators whose audiences match target voter demographics. The agencies approach creators with a brief: a topic, a set of talking points, a suggested format, and a payment. The creator produces the content. It goes up on their feed, their Stories, their TikTok — indistinguishable from the rest of their organic content. Their followers engage with it as they would any other post. The political campaign gets what it paid for: the *appearance* of grassroots support from a trusted voice. **The Disclosure Problem** Federal election law (via the Federal Election Commission) requires that paid political advertising be disclosed. But enforcement in the creator economy is nearly nonexistent. When a Super PAC pays a creator $10,000 to post a video about a candidate, that transaction should be reported and the content should be labeled as a paid political advertisement. In practice: - Most creators don't add political ad disclaimers - Platforms don't enforce political ad labeling on organic-format creator content - The FEC has limited bandwidth to audit thousands of micro-transactions across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube - Intermediary agencies create layers of separation between the campaign and the creator, making the funding chain difficult to trace Khalidi's candor was unusual precisely because most creators in this pipeline never talk about it. The NDAs are tight. The payments are structured through agencies. And the content is designed to be indistinguishable from authentic posts. **Scale** This isn't a fringe tactic. During the 2024 election cycle, both major parties invested heavily in creator-based political marketing. The Biden campaign alone disclosed over $1.4 million in influencer-related spending in a single FEC filing period — and that figure likely represents a fraction of total spend once PAC-funded and dark-money-funded creator content is included.
Source: FEC filings 2024, Daily Mail reporting by Katelyn Caralle, April 2024Why Creators Say Yes — the Economics of Political Content Deals
Political campaigns typically pay 2-5x more than consumer brands for equivalent creator content — making them the highest-paying clients in the influencer economyOne of the most important questions Khalidi's admission raises is: **why do creators take political deals?** The answer is straightforward economics. **The Pay Premium** Political campaigns and PACs consistently pay more per post than consumer brands. A mid-tier creator (50K–500K followers) might earn $2,000–$5,000 for a consumer brand sponsorship. The same creator can earn $5,000–$50,000 for a political post — especially during election season when campaigns are flush with donor money and desperate for authentic-looking content. Khalidi herself acknowledged that political content was among the most lucrative work she did as a creator. When you're a college-age creator being offered five-figure payments for a single Instagram post, the financial incentive overwhelms most ethical hesitation. **The Normalization Pipeline** Khalidi's trajectory is instructive. She didn't start with Biden campaign ads. She started with dating apps. Then Planned Parenthood. Then progressive nonprofits. By the time the Biden team's agency reached out, doing paid political content felt like a natural extension of what she was already doing — just another brand deal in a long series of brand deals. This is by design. Political influencer agencies know that creators who already do nonprofit and cause-related content are psychologically primed to accept political deals. The progression from "Planned Parenthood sponsor" to "Biden campaign contractor" feels incremental, not categorical. Each step normalizes the next. **The Audience Asymmetry** Here's the core ethical problem: Khalidi's audience followed her for lifestyle and adult content. They didn't sign up for political messaging. When she posted Biden campaign content, her followers experienced it as *Farha sharing her political opinions* — not as *a paid political advertisement created from a script provided by a presidential campaign*. The entire value of the transaction, from the campaign's perspective, is this asymmetry: the audience trusts the creator, and the campaign rents that trust. **Creator Responsibility** This isn't to vilify Khalidi specifically — she's one of the only creators honest enough to talk about it publicly. But her admission forces a question the entire creator economy needs to answer: **when a campaign pays you to manufacture the appearance of organic political support, and your audience doesn't know it's paid, what exactly are you selling?** The answer, uncomfortable as it is: you're selling your audience's trust.
Source: Influencer marketing industry data, FEC filings, Khalidi–Hanania interviewThe Disclosure Rules That Don't Work — FEC, FTC, and Platform Gaps
The FTC's influencer disclosure guidelines technically apply to political content — but the FEC and FTC have never coordinated enforcement on creator-based political advertisingKhalidi's story highlights a regulatory gap that has been growing since the creator economy exploded in scale. **The FTC Side: Influencer Disclosure** The Federal Trade Commission requires that creators disclose material connections — including payments — when endorsing products or services. The FTC's Endorsement Guides (updated 2023) explicitly state that paid partnerships must be clearly and conspicuously disclosed. Failure to disclose can result in enforcement action. But here's the gap: the FTC's authority is primarily focused on *commercial* advertising. Political speech occupies a different legal category. The FTC has historically deferred to the FEC on political advertising — and the FEC's rules were written for television ads, not TikTok posts. **The FEC Side: Political Ad Disclosure** The Federal Election Commission requires disclaimers on political advertising — the "Paid for by [Committee Name]" labels you see on TV ads and mailers. But the FEC's digital advertising rules are woefully outdated. They were last substantively updated before the modern creator economy existed. There is no clear, enforceable mandate requiring a creator who is paid by a political campaign to label their social media post as a paid political advertisement. **The Platform Side: Inconsistent Enforcement** Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube all have political ad policies — but they're designed for *formal* ad buys (paid media placed through the platform's ad system). When a political campaign pays a creator directly to make an organic-looking post, that post doesn't pass through the platform's ad system, doesn't trigger political ad labeling, and doesn't appear in the platform's political ad transparency library. The result: **a creator can be paid $20,000 by a presidential campaign, post political content to 500,000 followers, and neither the platform, the FEC, nor the FTC will flag it as a paid political advertisement.** **What Needs to Change** The regulatory framework needs a single, clear rule: if a political campaign, PAC, or political organization pays a creator to produce content, that content must be visibly labeled as a paid political advertisement — on every platform, in every format, regardless of whether it passes through a platform's formal ad system. Until that rule exists and is enforced, every creator-audience relationship in America is available for rent to the highest-bidding campaign.
Source: FTC Endorsement Guides (2023), FEC advisory opinions, platform political ad policiesWhat This Means for the Creator Economy — Trust Is the Product
"The entire value proposition of influencer marketing is trust transfer. If the audience learns the trust was manufactured, the model collapses." — Harvard Business ReviewKhalidi's admission is not just a political story. It's a **creator economy story** — and arguably the most important one the industry needs to confront. **Trust as Currency** The creator economy is built on a single asset: **the audience's belief that the creator's content reflects genuine opinions, experiences, and recommendations.** Every brand deal, every sponsorship, every paid partnership trades on this belief. When a creator recommends a product, their audience trusts that the recommendation is at least partially authentic — even when the #ad disclosure is present. Political content operates on the same trust model but with higher stakes. When Khalidi posted Biden campaign content, her followers didn't just buy a product — they potentially adjusted their political views based on what they believed was an authentic opinion from someone they followed and trusted. **The Khalidi Paradox** Here's the paradox: Khalidi's willingness to talk about it publicly makes her more trustworthy than the thousands of creators who took the same deals and stayed silent. She recognized the script was inauthentic ("a white woman told me to say I felt reflected by KBJ"). She declined to read it verbatim. She's now openly discussing the experience. But the system she's describing — the pipeline from brand deals to political propaganda — is still operating at massive scale. The creators who *didn't* push back on the scripts, who *did* read the talking points verbatim, who *never* disclosed the payment — those are the creators whose content is still sitting on Instagram and TikTok, still being consumed as authentic political opinion. **For Brands and Agencies** If you're a brand or marketing agency working with creators, Khalidi's story is a warning: **the same creators you're partnering with for product launches may also be doing undisclosed political content.** If that political content generates controversy — and it increasingly does — your brand is one screenshot away from guilt by association. Due diligence on creator partnerships now needs to include political content auditing. **For Creators** If you're a creator being approached for political deals: understand what you're selling. You're not selling a post. You're selling your audience's trust to a political operation. Whether you're comfortable with that transaction is your decision — but your audience deserves to know it's happening. **For Audiences** The uncomfortable truth: there is no reliable way for a social media user to determine whether a creator's political content is organic or paid. Until disclosure rules catch up, the safest assumption is that any creator content about a political candidate, policy, or campaign *could* be paid — and should be evaluated accordingly.
Source: Harvard Business Review creator economy analysis + Austin Web Services editorialLessons for Content Creators, Small Businesses, and Marketers
The line between "influencer marketing" and "political propaganda" is now a disclosure label. Whether that label appears is entirely optional in practice.Khalidi's story is ultimately a case study in what happens when influencer marketing infrastructure — built for selling consumer products — gets repurposed for political messaging without updating the rules of engagement. **For Content Creators:** Disclose everything. Not because the FTC or FEC will catch you — they probably won't. But because your audience's trust is the only asset you have that compounds over time. Every undisclosed paid post is a withdrawal from that trust account. When the receipt eventually surfaces — and in the age of subpoenas, leaks, and candid interviews like Khalidi's, it usually does — the damage is permanent. **For Small Business Owners:** Understand that the creator economy landscape is more complicated than it appears. When you partner with a creator to promote your business, you're sharing a platform with whatever else that creator is being paid to promote — including political content. Vet your partnerships carefully. Ask directly: do you do paid political content? If yes, ensure their political work doesn't create reputational risk for your brand. **For Marketing Agencies:** At Austin Web Services, we build content strategies and websites for businesses in Austin and beyond. This story matters to us because it's a reminder that **trust is the foundation of all effective marketing** — influencer, content, SEO, all of it. When trust is manufactured rather than earned, the short-term results might look impressive, but the long-term damage to the entire ecosystem is real. The creator economy grew because audiences trusted creators more than they trusted advertisements. If the industry allows political campaigns to quietly purchase that trust — at scale, without disclosure — the thing that made creator marketing valuable in the first place disappears. **The Bigger Picture:** Khalidi didn't break the system. She just showed us how it works. The question now is whether the creator economy, regulators, and platforms will do anything about it — or whether undisclosed political influencer marketing simply becomes the permanent new normal.
Source: Austin Web Services editorial analysisThe Creator Economy's Trust Problem Isn't Going Away
Farha Khalidi's admission — "I was doing full-on political propaganda" — is a single data point in a much larger trend. Political campaigns on both sides of the aisle have learned that creator content converts better than traditional ads because audiences don't recognize it as advertising. Until disclosure rules, platform enforcement, and creator ethics catch up, every influencer partnership exists on a spectrum between authentic endorsement and paid propaganda — and the audience has no reliable way to tell the difference.
Whether you're a creator, a brand, a small business owner, or just someone who follows people on Instagram — Khalidi's story is worth understanding. Because the same pipeline that turned her college social media following into a Biden campaign advertising channel is still operating. It's just that most creators aren't talking about it.
Austin Web Services — Content Strategy Built on Trust
We build websites, blogs, SEO strategies, and content systems for Austin businesses. Our work is built on earned trust — organic search rankings, genuine content, and transparent marketing practices. If you need a content strategy or a website that generates real leads without manufactured credibility, we should talk.
Related Services & Resources
Related Articles
Need a Content Strategy That Builds Real Trust?
We build websites, blogs, and content systems that generate organic leads for Austin businesses. No manufactured endorsements, no rented trust — just content that ranks and converts. Let's build yours.
Digital Marketing Strategist · Austin Web Services