The Source: Once derided as Trumpian, Teals now embrace Facebook tactic

If you can’t beat em, join em. This seems to be the approach of a Teals aligned group which is now embracing a Facebook strategy it once called a Trumpian source of misinformation.

Climate 200 group founder Simon Holmes à Court is the owner of a Facebook page called ‘Independent News’.

Putting the squeeze on Victoria’s movers, shakers and headline makers

Back in Voice referendum time there was great concern in progressive circles about a Facebook page called Referendum News which belonged to the right-wing ginger group Advance.

The page, which Advance pumped into target voters’ Facebook feeds, simply re-posted genuine news stories from media outlets, which were held to be helpful to the NO case.

As you can imagine the Teal movement didn’t care for it.

Particularly unimpressed was Ed Coper, the director of Populares, which according to his by-line when he’s boasting about his achievements in the Sydney Morning Herald is “the communications agency responsible for the digital advertising for the major teal independent campaigns.”

“The reason you set up a ‘Referendum News’ page is to dupe people into the mistaken belief they are seeing neutral info,” he thundered to The Guardian in July 2023.

“Of course that’s not what they’re seeing, they’re seeing no campaign messages masquerading as news”.

Simon Holmes à Court is funding site Independent News, which to The Source’s untrained eye looks to be a fairly obvious rip-off Referendum News.

The Election News page, formerly branded as Referendum News, was launched by Advance during The Voice.

Not only was it dishonest, it was … (gulp) … Trumpian, Coper worried.

“It’s straight out of the Republican playbook in the US in the last several years. It’s very effective”.

But it seems that if you can’t beat them, join them.

Recently The Source’s attention was drawn to a Facebook page called “Independent News” which bears a remarkable resemblance to Referendum News and which — would you believe it? — re-posts genuine news stories helpful to the Teals!

Owned by Climate 200 (Convenor, Simon Holmes à Court) it looks to The Source’s untrained eye to be a fairly obvious rip-off Referendum News — which Advance has since renamed Election News.

And Climate 200 is certainly getting behind it.

According to the register of political ads maintained – for now anyway – by Facebook’s owner Meta, in the past three months Climate 200 has dropped $98k into Mark Zuckerberg’s pocket promoting it.

If you think that sounds like a lot – it is.

But it’s nothing to how much Climate 200 is spending on Instagram and Facebook overall.

In addition to its Independent News spend, the organisation has spent another $342k on ads with Meta.

To get an idea of the comparative scale of this spending, in the same period Advance spent $50k on in its own name and $59.5k promoting Election News

In contrast the ALP head office has spent $15k and the Liberals HQ $10.9k.

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