UK government secretly paid foreign YouTube stars for ‘propaganda’
https://www.declassifieduk.org/uk-government-secretly-paid-foreign-youtube-stars-for-propaganda
Revealed: Media agency Zinc Network has contract to recruit social media influencers across Europe.
- Videos are secretly funded and signed-off by UK Foreign Office
- NDAs ban influencers from disclosing government involvement
- Contractor accused of election ‘interference’ in Slovakia against left-wing candidate
The UK government is secretly paying foreign YouTube stars to publish “propaganda” videos, Declassified can reveal.
A three-year investigation has found that online influencers are made to sign legal contracts banning them from disclosing the government’s involvement.
Whitehall officials give “feedback” on each video before the influencers are allowed to publish them.
The work is coordinated by a London-based media agency, Zinc Network Ltd, on behalf of the Foreign Office in a deal worth nearly £10m of public money.
Co-founded by a former Conservative Party spin doctor, the company has won lucrative contracts from the UK, US and Australian governments, becoming a major player in Western influence operations.
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Details of Zinc Network’s projects for the government have been a highly guarded secret. In 2022, the company signed a £9,450,000 contract with the Foreign Office, which is due to end in December this year.
Usually, large contracts are published in full on the government’s website, but in this instance the contract was kept under wraps.
For almost two years, the Foreign Office tried to prevent it from being released under the Freedom of Information Act, leading to three separate reprimands from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) who ruled in favour of transparency each time.
A heavily redacted version of the contract was eventually disclosed to Declassified, although the ICO is now assessing a fresh complaint over the Foreign Office’s refusal to release the document’s full annexes.
The documents show that Zinc was contracted to help counter disinformation in 22 countries across Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, and in the Baltics. This is done partly by “providing a greater variety” of reliable information, as well as by “increasing societal and general public resilience to disinformation”.
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