How Joe Biden’s digital team tamed the MAGA internet

In April, when Rob Flaherty, the digital director for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, told me that the former vice president’s team planned to use feel-good videos and inspirational memes to beat President Donald Trump in a “battle for the soul of the internet,” my first thought was, Good luck with that.

After all, we were talking about the internet, which doesn’t seem to reward anything uplifting or nuanced these days. In addition, Trump is a digital powerhouse, with an enormous and passionate following; a coalition of popular right-wing media outlets boosting his signal; and a flair for saying the kinds of outrageous, attention-grabbing things that are catnip to the algorithms of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.