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XPoliticians Are Turning To TikTok To Appeal To Young Voters
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.

In March, congresswoman and mayoral candidate Karen Bass documented submitting her paperwork to run for L.A. mayor on TikTok.
The video has just over 1000 views. Compared to her 14,000 Instagram followers and 46,000 Twitter followers, her 141 TikTok followers don’t amount to much.
Still, it reflects the growing number of political candidates trying to make the video-sharing app work for them.
That TikTok has exploded in recent years is hardly news. The app hosts 138 million active users in the United States, and 60% of its overall users are considered members of Gen Z. Teens and young adults have already utilized the app for political activism that ranges from sabotaging a Donald Trump rally to advocating for abortion rights.
Now, politicians have caught on to the fact that if they want to reach younger audiences, they have to be on TikTok.
“What we're seeing now is this gold rush where politicians are trying to be the first to stake their claims in this relatively unknown world of this medium that very few of them are actually using themselves,” says UC San Diego Political Science Professor Thad Kousser.
Though in 2018 midterms youth turnout nearly doubled and in 2020, the number of young people increased by 11%, turnout at local elections remains low. Engaging voters in local races has also proven to be difficult—in the 2017 Los Angeles mayoral election, only 20% of registered voters actually filled out their ballots.
But, platforms like TikTok can help boost the visibility of local candidates, according to University of Pennsylvania Professor Pinar Yildirim, who has previously studied how social media impacts political fundraising. Historically, smaller candidates have struggled to catch the mainstream media’s attention, making it more difficult to spread their message. Which is why they’re turning to TikTok.
@realpastorbrian Why can't we focus on real issues? I'm not going to be distracted. My people are suffering. Who is realpastorbrian.com #lgbt🌈 #blm #republican #gop #democrat #realissues #share #duet
In Orange County, Rep. Katie Porter has gained over 300,000 followers on the platform even while her account primarily reposts videos of media appearances. San Fernando Valley Rep. Tony Cárdenas shows off a staffer’s dog, grabs an electric vehicle charger and highlights bills that have passed in his TikTok videos that have earned thousands of views. In the Inland Empire, Republican congressional candidate Brian Hawkins often speaks directly to the camera as he urges people to focus on “real issues.” And when he does, he is speaking to an audience of nearly 115,000 people.
Even those seeking less-known political office are gaining traction one lip-synching video at a time. In Los Angeles, city controller candidate Kenneth Mejia has gained 9,000 followers through trending audios and dances.
Shayanne Wright, a candidate running for the Mesa Water District Board in Costa Mesa first started her account in February. She’s since posted once a day to build up her 1,516 followers. Wright admits that policy-specific videos get little traction. But her day-in-the-life videos have gone viral, such as one showing off potential photo shoot outfits that has gained over 34,000 views.
“I think people would be surprised how powerful the algorithm is, and something I really like about creating content on TikTok is that you know it's going to land in front of a similar audience,” Wright says.
@shayanne4costamesa Running for office feels like i literally learn something new everyday! 🤓 #localpolitics #secretaryofstate #ballot #womeninpolitics #costamesa #orangecounty #politics #democrat #vote #election #localgovernment
At 25, if Wright wins, she’ll be the youngest elected official in Costa Mesa. She says being young and a native social media user has helped leverage TikTok to her benefit. She tries to jump on trends before they grow stale, and she says she finds ways to make them more professional—a Nicki Minaj song can accompany campaign photos and a Steve Lacy song can be in the background of door-to-door canvassing.
To her credit, Wright doesn’t believe that TikTok following is necessarily an indication of her campaign’s success. But it has brought in donations and supporters, including five volunteers who found her through the platform.
To similar ends, Jurupa Valley City Council candidate Armando Carmona often posts about hyperlocal issues. His first few videos to take off since beginning his account in August highlighted his childhood in Jurupa Valley and outlined how he wants to aid the community. Since then, he has earned 1,557 followers, many of whom are young people in Jurupa Valley.
“Voters are looking for leaders and representatives that they're going to be able to communicate with in their own terms and in their own ways,” he says. “The new way of communicating with large amounts of people is through social media.”
Platforms like TikTok have become crucial for his campaign to reach people, as he says Jurupa Valley is limited in traditional media outlets.
“We started posting on TikTok because there's a void of information, and there's a lot of folks that are very interested in what's happening in their community,” Carmona says.
But amassing thousands of followers doesn’t always translate to thousands of voters. Kousser says TikTok can make it hard to foster a loyal base. Its finicky algorithm doesn’t always push videos to people who follow a user, and it is less focused on cultivating a social network. Not to mention, political concerns around privacy can put some candidates in a tricky position—using the app seems to be crucial for reaching young voters, but further measures taken against TikTok could make some candidates’ usage appear hypocritical.
But one thing is clear, Gen Z isn’t going to ditch the app anytime soon. Which is why, for the time being, Kousser says, local politicians should be asking themselves two questions. First, are these eyeballs winning votes? And second, are these eyeballs in my district?
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
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A Digital License Plate in California Will Cost You $215 Per Year
Thanks to a new bill passed on October 5, California drivers now have the choice to chuck their traditional metal license plates and replace them with digital ones.
The plates are referred to as “Rplate” and were developed by Sacramento-based Reviver. A news release on Reviver’s website that accompanied the bill’s passage states that there are “two device options enabling vehicle owners to connect their vehicle with a suite of services including in-app registration renewal, visual personalization, vehicle location services and security features such as easily reporting a vehicle as stolen.”
Reviver Auto Current and Future CapabilitiesFrom Youtube
There are wired (connected to and powered by a vehicle’s electrical system) and battery-powered options, and drivers can choose to pay for their plates monthly or annually. Four-year agreements for battery-powered plates begin at $19.95 a month or $215.40 yearly. Commercial vehicles will pay $275.40 each year for wired plates. A two-year agreement for wired plates costs $24.95 per month. Drivers can choose to install their plates, but on its website, Reviver offers professional installation for $150.
A pilot digital plate program was launched in 2018, and according to the Los Angeles Times, there were 175,000 participants. The new bill ensures all 27 million California drivers can elect to get a digital plate of their own.
California is the third state after Arizona and Michigan to offer digital plates to all drivers, while Texas currently only provides the digital option for commercial vehicles. In July 2022, Deseret News reported that Colorado might also offer the option. They have several advantages over the classic metal plates as well—as the L.A. Times notes, digital plates will streamline registration renewals and reduce time spent at the DMV. They also have light and dark modes, according to Reviver’s website. Thanks to an accompanying app, they act as additional vehicle security, alerting drivers to unexpected vehicle movements and providing a method to report stolen vehicles.
As part of the new digital plate program, Reviver touts its products’ connectivity, stating that in addition to Bluetooth capabilities, digital plates have “national 5G network connectivity and stability.” But don’t worry—the same plates purportedly protect owner privacy with cloud support and encrypted software updates.
5 Reasons to avoid the digital license plate | Ride TechFrom Youtube
After the Rplate pilot program was announced four years ago, some raised questions about just how good an idea digital plates might be. Reviver and others who support switching to digital emphasize personalization, efficient DMV operations and connectivity. However, a 2018 post published by Sophos’s Naked Security blog pointed out that “the plates could be as susceptible to hacking as other wireless and IoT technologies,” noting that everyday “objects – things like kettles, TVs, and baby monitors – are getting connected to the internet with elementary security flaws still in place.”
To that end, a May 2018 syndicated New York Times news service article about digital plates quoted the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which warned that such a device could be a “‘honeypot of data,’ recording the drivers’ trips to the grocery store, or to a protest, or to an abortion clinic.”
For now, Rplates are another option in addition to old-fashioned metal, and many are likely to opt out due to cost alone. If you decide to go the digital route, however, it helps if you know what you could be getting yourself into.
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New Yonder App Aims To ‘Harness' the Power of BookTok
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Serial fiction app Yonder wants you to buy a book one chapter at a time.
Backed by the teams behind popular online story platforms Wattpad and Webtoon, Yonder will host daily updates for stories written by both bestselling authors and viral creators. Yonder recently launched its Android app with a variety of stories that will be updated daily. Much of that content is romance, fantasy, sci-fi and thrillers—all genres that have found an audience on BookTok, the community of TikTok users who post about their latest reads.
“A lot of what we have acquired going into launch is informed by some of those top trending areas,” says Yonder head of content acquisitions Annie Stone.
One of the authors Yonder will be featuring is Ruby Dixon, whose success primarily stems from the online reader community. Her self-published alien erotica series, “Ice Planet Barbarians,” was picked up by Penguin Publishing Group after TikTok creators made it an Amazon bestseller. With Dixon’s Yonder-exclusive novel “Bound to the Shadow Prince,” Stone says the app can attract the author’s extensive online following.
“[Dixon] is one of the authors who really harnessed the power of BookTok,” Stone says. “That's definitely an area that we are scouring and inspired by.”
In addition to tapping authors, Yonder is partnering with publishers to serialize both pre-existing and new stories. Blackstone Publishing, Aethon, Sterling and Stone, Portal Books and Wraithmarked are Yonder’s first partners. Through them, Yonder will serialize the young adult vampire series “House of Night” and the video game-inspired series “Ascend Online,” among other titles.
Yonder’s content will also expand on pre-existing IP, such as the sequel to the web series “Available Darkness.” Stone says providing a new space for creators who have already found success in the serialized format will bring their fans to the app.
In recent years, readers have turned to a number of serial fiction apps. Radish has found success within the romance genre, while subgenres like werewolf erotica are taking off on platforms like GoodNovel and Dreame. Amazon, which has already cornered the market on e-books, has explored the format with Kindle Vella—an offshoot of its ebook platform that offers serialized stories. Even classic novels are getting the serial treatment, with Dracula Daily sending snippets of Bram Stoker’s novel directly to people’s inboxes.
Yonder app book example courtesy of Yonder
Stone says part of what makes serialized fiction successful is its flexibility—readers pay incrementally only as long as the story engages them. After the first few chapters, which are free, readers can decide if they want to pay between 20 and 65 coins per chapter—one pack of 100 coins costs 99 cents —depending on its length and author. Yonder also rewards regular use by unlocking some content for those who use the app daily.
Even as print book sales are seeing a rare boom, Stone insists there is a demand for digital reading experiences. She views Yonder as a way to engage an audience already distracted by what’s on their phones.
“We're all either unhappily or happily glued to our phones, and we're constantly very busy,” Stone says. “We think that this is a great way to reach people in those interstitial moments when they're just looking for a quick, exciting entertainment bite.”
Kristin Snyder is an editorial intern for dot.la. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
Your Guide to the dot.LA Summit 2022
Drew Grant is dot.LA's Senior Editor. She's a media veteran with over 15-plus years covering entertainment and local journalism. During her tenure at The New York Observer, she founded one of their most popular verticals, tvDownload, and transitioned from generalist to Senior Editor of Entertainment and Culture, overseeing a freelance contributor network and ushering in the paper's redesign. More recently, she was Senior Editor of Special Projects at Collider, a writer for RottenTomatoes streaming series on Peacock and a consulting editor at RealClearLife, Ranker and GritDaily. You can find her across all social media platforms as @Videodrew and send tips to drew@dot.la.
We're so excited to be bringing back our annual dot.LA Summit, held in-person October 21st-22nd at the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles. Featuring hundreds of top founders, investors and operators for the largest celebration of L.A.'s tech and startup ecosystem, this year's program has a lot going on... and there's still time to register!
Here's what to expect from this year's Summit.
summit graphic dot.la
October 20th (Doors Open at 5 pm PST):
Join on us on our preview night, which begins with a VIP cocktail reception, three fireside chats and a pitch competition. First, we have 2021’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” Alex Israel of Metropolis Technologies, who will be doing exclusive one-on-one interviews with Arena Club co-founder Brian Lee, followed by two-time Dodgers All-Star Shawn Green.
After that, dot.LA co-founder Spencer Rascoff will host a discussion with Julia Boorstin about her new book, "When Women Lead."
Finally, we wrap up the evening with our annual Pitch Competition, hosted by Fenwick. The winner will be announced the next day, during the main event!
October 21st (Doors Open at 7:30 am PST):
Get ready for a big day by exploring the Bond Exhibit at the Petersen Museum while enjoying a quick breakfast, then head on over to the main stage, where dot.LA co-founder and CEO Sam Adams will be joined by sweetgreen founder Jonathan Neman to discuss L.A.'s historically unique relationship to health food and salads... and what Angelenos eating habits can tell us about the future of sustainable eating.
Also on the main stage will be our Web3 panel on virtual avatars, hosted by reporter Samson Amore. Panelists include Tricia Biggio from Invisible Universe, Asid Malik from Jadu, and MELON CEO Josh Neuman. The panel will provide a chance for startups working on avatars to explain how we could navigate the web and interact with each other using our digital proxies.
Following that, Sam Adams will host another restauranteur and Los Angeles staple, Alex Canter from Canter's Deli and Nextbite, followed by a panel on tackling the housing crisis in Los Angeles hosted by dot.LA reporter Decerry Donato. This panel will discuss tech’s impact on developments in the industry, including how tech can be used to address affordable housing, homelessness and innovation in a rapidly changing market and be hosted by Crate Modular's Jaren Grady; Deputy Mayor of Budget and Innovation of the City of Los Angeles Jeanne Holm and Ross Maguire of Azure Printed Homes.
Wrapping up the morning we have three breakout rooms, which include a workshop on Scaling Your Leadership, hosted by Evolution and moderated by Evolution Managing Director and Co-founder Matt Auron, featuring panelists Janine Davis, Carolyn Jones, and Erik Kellener. Following that, Pacific Western Bank will host a breakout session called Funding Growth Beyond The Term Sheet. Attendees can also sit in on a panel on Creators, Curators, and Community Builders, hosted by dot.LA writer Lon Harris and featuring guests Jon Bodenheimmer from Spotter, Evan Britton from Famous Birthdays, Jamie Gutfreund of Whaler and Rosie Nguyen of Fanhouse. The panel will focus on the creator economy and how Big Tech money has changed the way influencers monetize their brands.
After a two-hour lunch, we'll return with three more breakout rooms. First up is Charging Up Clean Mobility, hosted by dot.LA writer David Shultz and featuring Paul Gioupis from Zeem Solutions, Ramy El-Bartrawi from EV Mobility and Scott Painter from Autonomy. Following that we have Revolutionizing Online Marketplaces moderated by Grace Kangdani from Bank of America and sponsored by Zoolatech, featuring panelists Roman Kaplun from Zoolatech and Dan Dan Li from Popshop Live. And finally we have Equity in the L.A. Ecosystem, featuring Kojuan “Ko” Trinidad-Williams of L.A. Tech and featuring panelists including Stuart McCalla from Evolution, Marcos Gonzalez from Vamos Ventures, Derek Smith from Plug In South LA and Aisling Carlson from Diversity VC.
At 3 p.m., join Spencer Rascoff as we close out our conversation portion of the day in talks with Dana Settle, managing partner at Greycroft, for Founders & Funders: The Artistry Between Transformative Entrepreneurs and Key Investors. The two will discuss the unique relationship between founder and anchor VC in the world of high-growth startups.
Our last main stage panel will be Health in the Post-Roe Era, moderated by Kathryne Cooper of Jumpstart Nova. This panel seeks to address the discrepancy in intent and action from investors in the tech, and financial sides of reproductive health care, while also sharing developments in health tech for those living in the Post-Roe-Era. Panelists include Crystal Adesanya from Kiira Health, Kiki Freeman of HeyJane, Cindy Adam of Choix, and Dr. Jessica Nouhavandi, co-CEO, co-founder and lead pharmacist of Honeybee Health.
Following that, dot.LA will be presenting its annual Startup Awards, and announcing the winner's of the previous night's Pitch Competition. Enjoy appetizers and cocktails as we close down the evening with a mixer hosted by dot.LA, and chat with our editors and journalists about the future of LA Tech.
Register today for dot.LA's Summit 2022, we can't wait to see you there!
dot.LA Summit 2022 would like to thank its official sponsors, including: Bank of America, Fenwick, Metropolis, Zoolatech, Pacific West, Evolution, TriNet, RSM, Satellite Teams, Coda Search, iWallet, CoMotion, ELIQS, Popl, Curbivore, Not Flat Photos and WeWork.
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Drew Grant is dot.LA's Senior Editor. She's a media veteran with over 15-plus years covering entertainment and local journalism. During her tenure at The New York Observer, she founded one of their most popular verticals, tvDownload, and transitioned from generalist to Senior Editor of Entertainment and Culture, overseeing a freelance contributor network and ushering in the paper's redesign. More recently, she was Senior Editor of Special Projects at Collider, a writer for RottenTomatoes streaming series on Peacock and a consulting editor at RealClearLife, Ranker and GritDaily. You can find her across all social media platforms as @Videodrew and send tips to drew@dot.la.