The Pro-Hillary Site Nobody Asked for or Used Is Rebooting
In September, Hillary Clinton endorsed new website Verrit as the “media platform for the 65.8 million” who supported her 2016 campaign. Co-launched by Clintonworld hanger-on and Loud Twitter Man Peter Daou, Verrit marketed itself as a “sanctuary in a chaotic media environment,” showcasing its supposed dedication to facts with numerically coded cards sharing random statistics and inspirational quotes. It was soft-edged Democratic propaganda dressed up as nonpartisan truth-telling, and it was incredibly dumb.
Just five months later, those 65.8 million people now find themselves without their chosen sanctuary. If you look at Verrit.com today, you will find a static page with sad news for us all: “Reboots Summer 2018.” Links to article pages similarly bring up this away message.
There was no going-away tweet or Facebook post announcing this tragic hiatus. Daou, a manic tweeter, curiously didn’t post anything about the break. Nor did he immediately respond to a request for comment sent through his personal site. A note to Verrit’s contact page this afternoon has also gone unanswered. I’ll update this post if any of that changes.
As Daou tweeted in early September, Verrit had big ambitions: “Daily, rigorously-verified info and analysis. Weekly Daou podcast this fall. Premium version and VerritTV on YouTube in 2018.” Exactly none of that happened. RIP “Weekly Daou podcast.”
Will Verrit’s reboot be the platform’s big jump into the multimedia #Resistance content market? Could it be undergoing the dreaded pivot to video so many media companies have made amid a tough digital economy? Is this a blockchain play? Time will tell. A better question: How am I supposed to verify all my Verrit authentication codes in the meantime?
Update, 5:13 p.m.: Representatives for Verrit still haven’t responded to my request for comment. They did, however, block me on Twitter.