Rolling Stone reports accusations of Nazism against Swift were a coordinated attack

[Taylucifer 5,235]

Taylor Swift’s Last Album Sparked Bizarre Accusations Of Nazism. It Was A Coordinated Attack

Data analysis of social media posts painting the singer as a Trump supporter or white supremacist revealed a network of inauthentic accounts 

By Miles Klee

Link: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/taylor-swifts-social-media-campaign-life-of-a-showgirl-1235480646/

Summary

After Taylor Swift released The Life of a Showgirl in early October, social media filled with accusations that she was promoting MAGA politics, trad-wife ideology, or even Nazi symbolism. Many fans assumed these claims (which focused on things like the word “savage” or a lightning-bolt necklace) were simply overreactions from left-leaning commentators. However, new research from behavioural-intelligence firm GUDEA shows the backlash was not organic.

Analysing 24,000 posts across 18,000 accounts, they found that a small cluster of inauthentic, coordinated accounts (only 3.77% of the total) drove 28% of all conversation about Swift during the two-week window after the album’s release. These accounts seeded conspiratorial content on fringe sites like 4chan before it spread to mainstream platforms where genuine users, by arguing against it, unintentionally amplified it.

GUDEA identifyed two distinct spikes in misleading activity related to Swift. The first came on Oct. 6 and 7, with approximately 35 percent of the posts in GUDEA’s data set for that time frame generated by accounts behaving more like bots than human users. The second took place over Oct. 13 and 14, after Swift released a merch collection that included the lightning bolt necklace (commemorating the song “Opalite”), with about 40 percent of posts shared by inauthentic accounts and conspiracist content accounting for 73.9 percent of the total volume of conversation.  

GUDEA also found overlap between the accounts targeting Swift and those involved in a bot-driven smear campaign against Blake Lively, suggesting a broader, sophisticated network aimed at reputational harm. Keith Presley, GUDEA’s founder and CEO notes that some 50 percent of the web is now made up of bots. “This is something that we’ve seen escalate on our corporate side — this type of espionage, or working to damage someone’s reputation.”

The article concludes that in today’s online ecosystem, inflammatory claims are designed to trigger engagement and that outrage, even in defence, only boosts their reach.

[Ladle Ghoulash 50,355]

I mean, yeah lol. I don’t even fw her like that, but a lot of those accusations felt like a colossal stretch 

[Guest]

She does not need a smearing campaign. She deserves all the hate she gets. Awful human being like other billionaires.

[jared011 590]

Oh yeah Rolling Stone who gave TLOAS 100 or whatever. Theyre not biased whatsoever!

[Phantomhive 2,058]

These accusations or at least similar to them have been going on for like half a decade that it's literally a non-event atp. The stats just to prove that all of this was "inorganic" is so damn extra and something a stan on twt would make an entire thread about then send it to their payola group chat hoping it'll go semi-viral 

Istg the table stans at rolling stone are just as biased and unprofessional as the ones at slant who do the exact opposite to gar 

[Taylucifer 5,235]

2 hours ago, jared011 said:

Oh yeah Rolling Stone who gave TLOAS 100 or whatever. Theyre not biased whatsoever!

they're reporting it, here's the report: 

https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/69370c45ee6946ee05e9618a/6938f591279bf559ec50cd1c_GUDEA - Taylor Swift _ Anatomy of a Narrative.pdf

[River 126,454]

She paid for that lol