Dear John,

The team and I were thinking it might be helpful to show some of the data coming out of Inequality Media this year, including a look at the outsized effect we’re having across social media.

Inequality Media by the numbers in 2021:

People who saw our content: 1 billion

Video views across all platforms: 221 million

TikTok video views alone: 23.3 million

Total followers across all platforms: 6.5 million

Videos produced: 250

Staff members: 6

Billionaires and media moguls we've ticked off: Too many to count

But really, I can honestly say that I’ve never worked with such a small, high-caliber team that punches so far above its weight.

All Donations MATCHED

And we certainly have quite a fight facing us:

A 27-page study was released by Twitter that shows its algorithm demonstrates a “statistically significant difference favoring the political right wing.” That means that tweets from right-wing politicians receive more amplification from the algorithm than those from the left, and right-wing news organizations are more amplified than fact-based news.
A peer-reviewed study by New York University found that far-right news publishers known for putting out misinformation got “six times the amount of likes, shares, and interactions” on Facebook as did trustworthy news sources, such as the World Health Organization.
On TikTok, anti-vaccine propaganda targeting young people is rampant. One study shows that, in a short period of time after the vaccine was made available to the public, more than 4,500 anti-vaccine videos were created, and they garnered more than 20 million views and 2 million likes, comments, and shares.

Every day I consider myself especially blessed to have the great fortune of spending much of my time with Heather, Kara, Court, Katie, Michael, and Kyle of the Inequality Media team. They inspire me with their tenacity and creativity, as well as their refusal to give in to cynicism. Instead of being bitter or angry about what is happening around them, they have all sorts of ideas for how to clean it up, fix it, produce compelling videos about those fixes, and make the world better. And they have the energy and determination to succeed.

They keep me optimistic and sane. They keep me young.

Become a year-end donor to help this skeleton crew do even more in 2022 (including maybe even going up to 7 staff members!?). Your donation will be doubled by a generous donor who is committed to our mission.

Grateful to be in the fight with you all,

Robert Reich

Inequality Media