Taylor Swift branded a Nazi in “coordinated online attack” by thriller accounts
Popstar Taylor Swift faced an organised attempt to brand her a Nazi when she launched her latest album, but the experts tracked the dodgy accounts behind the campaign aren’t sure why she was targeted
Taylor Swift’s notorious boyfriend issues were overshadowed, at least briefly, by her problems with secret social media accounts when she debuted her latest album, according to an expert AI platform.
When the popstar launched ‘The Life of a Showgirl’, a hidden campaign sprang into life to brand her a Nazi, even comparing her merchandise to the symbols of Hitler’s elite SS guard, reports the Guardian.
Wading into the blizzard of posts, the AI-driven behavioural intelligence platform Gudea found that the wild accusations and shrieks of outrage were being driven by only a few accounts, working together to blacken her name. But the goals of his vicious campaign remain a mystery.
Gudea’s report looked at over 24,000 posts and 18,000 accounts across 14 social media platforms between 4 October, the day of the album’s release, and 18 October. These posts savaged Swift for hiding ‘dog-whistle’ right-wing references in her lyrics.
A lightning bolt-style necklace from her merchandise line, a reference to her track Opalite, was compared to SS insignia.
But the report found that only 3.77% of accounts drove 28% of discussions about Swift. The poisonous posts focused on her supposed ties to the Maga movement. Her engagement to American football player Travis Kelce was also blasted as “trad” or conservative. In a spike on 6-7 October, 35% of posts in the dataset came from bot-like accounts.
Gudea couldn’t uncover who was responsible but found “a significant user overlap” with a campaign attacking the actress Blake Lively, an ex-pal of Swift now suing actor and director Justin Baldoni for sexual harrasment.
The platform said that a hidden network “injects misinformation into otherwise organic conversations” about celebrities. Allegations moved from niche spaces like 4chan to mainstream social media apps and were then unwittingly spread by the public and algorithms.
“The false narrative that Taylor Swift was using Nazi symbolism did not remain confined to fringe conspiratorial spaces; it successfully pulled typical users into comparisons between Swift and Kanye West,” the researchers wrote.
Even getting the public to disagree with the allegations counted as a win for the people behind the attack, Gudea founder and CEO Keith Presley told Rolling Stone. “That’s part of the goal for these types of narratives… You’ll see the influencers jump on first, because it’s going to get them clicks.”
The posts seemed designed to imitate shrill left-wing outrage. But the Guardian newspaper implied Swift might indeed deserve to be cancelled for writing a song called ‘Cancelled!’ that shows sympathy for social pariahs.
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