The outrage against the group started over the weekend, after the Lincoln Project posted a video ripped from @ScribblinTaylor’s Twitter account. The video, shared on Friday, features clips of USPS workers delivering mail set with a twinkling filter while Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “W.A.P.” plays in the background. The Lincoln Project shared the exact same filtered video on its Twitter on Saturday, except the group used a remix of The Marvelettes’ classic “Please Mr. Postman” as the song.
On Sunday, another Twitter user blasted the organization for using @ScribblinTaylor’s and other people’s content without giving proper accreditation.
“Stealing from creators is a nonpartisan crime @ProjectLincoln,” NBC News reporter Brandy Zadrozny wrote in a tweet, which included a number of instances in which the Lincoln Project tweeted out an almost carbon copy of a meme to its nearly 2 million followers that was originally posted by someone else.
Some of the examples shared include a tweet posted by @kellyxhui in July, which features a number of emoji animals totting envelopes with the caption, “they’re voting for ed markey,” in reference to Democratic Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts. The Lincoln Project copied the image emoji-for-emoji and changed the caption to: “They’re voting by mail for [Vice President Joe] Biden.”
Although it’s an admittedly Republican-supporting PAC, the Lincoln Project’s agenda since its 2019 creation has primarily been to help remove President Donald Trump from office. And while its social media accounts full of funny memes and videos may be a means of appealing to millennial and Gen-Z voters, as well as Republicans who may be drifting towards the left, to those who have had their content copied by the group, the organization’s ethics don’t necessarily match up with their own. Not to mention, by not including proper credit, the Lincoln Project aids in silencing the voices of creators with smaller platforms.
“I’m a young person. I’m a woman of color,” Kelly Hui, who operates the Twitter handle @kellyxhui, told The Verge in an interview published on Tuesday. " I also have like a very small internet presence and to see that sort of erasure of my tweet, even if it’s just like a couple cute emojis, to have it co-opted by the huge organization which to my understanding is probably run by middle-aged white men, it just sucks."
Newsweek has reached out to the Lincoln Project for comment, but did not hear back in time for publication.
