California may fine content creators who don’t disclose they were paid to post about politics

But Smith started the video with a disclaimer: “This is an ad, and honestly, I wish more political content said that first.” Steyer, a Democratic billionaire who spent more than $215 million of his own money in his unsuccessful bid for governor, took fire from rivals for paying content creators. That prompted Democratic Assemblymember Marc Berman to write a new bill to penalize content creators and political committees if the creator fails to state they were compensated. Smith wouldn’t say exactly how much the campaign paid him, but he said it was in the thousands of dollars. She worries that some people may take money to post political content without doing a “deep dive into the candidate to make sure that’s somebody they should support.”