AI Kills Trust and Followers Don’t Matter Anymore.
A new study shows how AI hurts political ads and why nobody sees the same internet as you.
Hey!
Hope you got your taxes paid yesterday! (and aren’t having a panic attack just now seeing this reminder)
Two trends below from the team to keep an eye on: AI in ads (a new study from AAPC), and why you need to stop focusing so much on individual creators’ followers and instead consider the algorithmic distribution.
As always, reach out to talk about creator campaigns. We’re doing a lot of interesting, organizing-forward projects, from niche microcreators in Slack channels that campaigns can stay in easy touch with, to stateside creator briefings targeting regional creators.
Let me know if you want to brainstorm how your organization can integrate creators in a way that makes sense for you.
Thanks for reading!
Ryan
Founder & CEO, People First
AI Kills Trust. Creators Build It.
The AAPC Foundation’s Disclaimer Effect study delivers a pretty simple takeaway: AI disclaimers hurt trust. When viewers see a disclaimer, they don’t feel informed, they get skeptical. In testing, trust dropped the moment the disclaimer appeared, even when the ad itself hadn’t changed. In other words, disclosure doesn’t just signal transparency, it can actively weaken your message.
It gets messier from there. Most viewers don’t even understand what an AI disclaimer means. Some think the whole ad is fake, others think just a small part was edited, and some may miss it entirely. So you end up in a lose-lose: either people ignore it, or they see it and trust you less. That’s not a great place for campaigns or organizations trying to move audiences.
The actionable takeaway is straightforward: avoid putting yourself in a position where your ads feel AI-generated in the first place. The easiest way to do that is to use real people. Creator-led content naturally signals authenticity, and it reduces both the need for AI production and the risk of triggering skepticism or regulatory flags.
This is where influencer marketing becomes more than a tactic, it’s a trust strategy. Real creators, real voices, real communities. In a world where AI is making everything feel a little less human, the campaigns that win are the ones that feel undeniably real.
Nobody Sees The Same Internet As You
In one of 2025’s best film’s, Eddington, you’ve got people living in the same small town, walking the same streets, but existing in completely different realities because of what they see online. That’s not fiction, that’s the internet in 2026. Nobody sees the same internet as you. Feeds are no longer shared spaces, they’re individually constructed environments, shaped in real time by behavior, interests, and algorithmic prediction.
And the data backs it up. Platforms have fully shifted from follower-based distribution to algorithmic discovery. In 2026, feeds are driven by AI models that prioritize watch time, shares, and predicted relevance over who you follow. TikTok led this shift, but Instagram, YouTube, and even LinkedIn now operate the same way. The result: a creator with zero followers can outperform someone with a million if the content hits. At the same time, average organic reach has collapsed. Many accounts now reach only 3–5% of their followers, with reach down 15–20% year over year .
That’s the key disconnect: follower count ≠ distribution. In fact, most creators can’t even reliably reach their own audience anymore. Over half of creators say it’s harder to reach their followers today than it was just a few years ago, because platforms are prioritizing recommended content over followed content. Algorithms are deciding what gets seen, not social graphs. And because those algorithms are personalized, two people can follow the same accounts and see entirely different feeds.
For clients, this changes the strategy completely. Stop obsessing over follower counts, it’s an outdated metric. What matters now is content and creators who can break into the algorithm and reach the right audience. That means investing in creator-led campaigns, native content, and voices that actually resonate within specific communities. The goal isn’t to “rent” someone’s audience anymore, it’s to create content that earns distribution. In a world where nobody sees the same internet, the only way to scale reach is to work with creators who know how to show up in the right feeds.
