# Dominick McGee (Dom Lucre) Right-wing social media influencer and **[[QAnon]]** promoter operating on X under the name "Dom Lucre." He matters to the vault twice over: as the most transparent documented case of paid-for-play political posting — not because he disclosed the payments at the time, but because he later published a rate card — and as the single clearest instance of **[[Content Moderation]]** rules being set aside for a political ally by the platform's owner. ## KB significance: the price list In summer 2025, McGee posted an attack on former President Barack Obama for opposing the sweeping tax-cut and safety-net-slashing bill before a House vote. The post, beginning with the word "BREAKING," was viewed 1.3 million times. It was paid content — but that wasn't disclosed at the time. In January 2026, McGee launched a personal website that revealed the Obama post was paid, listing it as one of 11 "successful ad examples." The site also included a **price list**: $15,000 for posts beginning with "BREAKING" or "DEVELOPING." The site does not disclose who paid him for any of the posts. McGee has since begun tagging some posts with X's #PaidPartnership label, which the platform introduced to increase transparency. The fact that he started self-disclosing *after* building a public portfolio of paid political hits — rather than before — makes him a useful case study in the incentive structure of the undisclosed influence economy. ## The 2023 reinstatement In **July 2023** McGee posted to Twitter a screenshot taken from child sexual abuse material, connected to the criminal conviction of an Australian man in the Philippines. The post stood for four days and was widely seen before the account was **suspended on July 26, 2023** under the platform's child-sexual-exploitation rules. Within days **[[Elon Musk]]** personally intervened. He stated publicly that the posts would be deleted and the account reinstated, and it was. **[[Media Matters for America]]** catalogued the right-wing figures who had publicly demanded the reinstatement. McGee subsequently denied having shared the imagery, saying he had only linked to a news article — an account contradicted by the record. > [!important] Why this belongs in the KB > Child sexual abuse material is the one category of content every major platform treats as absolutely prohibited, with no appeal and no political valence. **This is the case where that line moved** — not through a policy change but through the owner's personal decision on behalf of an aligned account, and after a public pressure campaign by allied influencers. The vault records it as the outer bound of what platform ownership can override, and as the reason [[Content Moderation]] at [[Twitter]] after 2022 cannot be analyzed as rule-following. It is also the necessary context for the paid-posting business below: the account that was monetized in 2026 exists because of an exception granted in 2023. ## Rate card (self-published, January 2026) - $15,000 — posts beginning with "BREAKING" or "DEVELOPING" - Other tiers listed on personal website (amounts not publicly reported by NYT) ## See Also - [[Creator Grid]] — GOP influencer marketing firm (parallel ecosystem) - [[Content Moderation]] — the rules the 2023 reinstatement suspended - [[Elon Musk]] — who reinstated the account personally - [[QAnon]] — the conspiracy ecosystem he came out of - [[Astroturfing]] — paid content presented as organic - [[Dark Money]] — undisclosed funding behind political influencer payments