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A pair of leading Democratic super PACs are turning to viral clickbait on social media in an effort to build lists of supporters they can pepper with explicit political advertising. It’s a novel strategy in political messaging, and one that doesn’t appear to have been mirrored by the groups’ Republican counterparts.
At least five Facebook pages that are part of the apparent clickbait push don’t appear, on their face, to be outwardly political. Instead, their public-facing posts are the sorts of viral stories common on social-media-centric news sites. But while that’s all that appears on each page’s public Facebook feed, they’re also buying up huge numbers of Facebook ads designed to sway key midterm Senate contests.