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The Taylor Swift far-right conspiracy was orchestrated by bots (Picture: Ashok Kumar/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)
Fiercely defending your favourite artist against haters online feels like a natural move for fans, but could engaging in heated debates just make things worse?
We all know the internet is deeply reactionary and thrives on controversy with ‘ragebait’ and ‘hot takes’ spiralling into full-blown fights.
Taylor Swift is no stranger to her name sparking intense responses from both sides, with people looking to cut her down just as quickly as lift her up.
However, when she dropped The Life of a Showgirl, the reaction was far more extreme than even the Mastermind singer could predict.
A bizarre claim took over the internet that Taylor, 35, was secretly an alt-right neo-nazi Trump supporter who was using her merch as a dog whistle.
Rolling Stone has now confirmed what many suspected: this was a conspiracy orchestrated with the help of thousands of bots.
But by rushing to her defence, fans may have unintentionally perpetuated it.
Swifties may have amplified the discourse (Picture: Erika Goldring/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)
What was Taylor Swift accused of?
Claims that Taylor had become a ‘tradwife’ due to her relationship with Travis Kelce began bubbling months ago, alongside accusations of being a Trump supporter.
It didn’t seem to matter to those buying into the conspiracy that the Kansas City Chiefs player had taken the knee in support of Black Lives Matter and been in adverts encouraging people to get vaccinated.
However, their association with Brittany Mahomes — who is allegedly a MAGA supporter — developed an Achilles heel in Taylor’s long-cultured liberal image.
Fans reminded naysayers that Taylor has actively posted about voting Democrat and has spoken about her dislike of Trump, but the seed was planted.
Her romance with Travis Kelce has been painted in negative lights (Picture: David Eulitt/Getty Images)
The floodgates then opened when discourse about her song Eldest Daughter claimed her use of the word ‘savage’ was racially charged.
Thinkpieces then claimed her Opalite necklace, which featured lightning bolts, was reminiscent of the SS symbol and therefore a racist dog whistle (coded language that has a second meaning).
The necklace was then removed from her online stores.
Taylor is known for planting Easter eggs for her fans to discover extra details or tease her next era, but this was turned against her to justify unfounded speculation.
The Opalite necklace was later removed from the store (Picture: Taylor Swift/Store)
Left-leaning creators, including internet personality Hank Green, then weighed in on the discourse and discussions about Taylor’s political stance. Which only served to amplify the outrage.
As Rolling Stone discovered, much of this was originally disseminated by bots.
What is a bot and why are they used?Kieren McCarthy, a journalist and former Communications Director for DNS, a tech and policy research foundation, spoke to Metro about the growing issue.
He explained: ‘A bot in this context is a social media account that has been created automatically using software, alongside dozens, sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands of others. They are then controlled centrally to either post content or amplify other accounts’ posts.’
Think of the pocket dimension monkeys in James Gunn’s Superman, typing away mindlessly with the sole aim of destroying the Kryptonian’s reputation. It’s that, but a computer programme instead of a monkey.
James Gunn’s Superman had a rather blunt bot metaphor (Picture: Warner Bros)
Bots can be ‘quite profitable’ in the online world, despite companies attempting to limit their influence, as engagement is key for social media.
Algorithms are attempting to push the ‘most interesting content’ to keep you engaged and scrolling – it doesn’t matter if those comments are good or bad, the more responses, the more it is pushed out.
We’ve heard the term bots thrown around a lot recently as they were also said to be used in the alleged smear campaign against Blake Liveley.
However, they’re not a ‘sophisticated Skynet-style super-intelligence’ as Rohit Parmar-Mistry, founder at Pattrn Data, put it.
He said: ‘In reality, they are just basic software scripts, think of them more like mass-produced ‘battle droids’ from a sci-fi movie.
‘Individually, they are rudimentary, clumsy, and incapable of independent thought, simply mimicking human behaviour at a speed and scale no actual person could match. Their power lies in how they are deployed: not with precision, but with brute force.’
Bots are incredibly prevalent across all social media platforms (Picture: Saeed KHAN / AFP via Getty Images)
Bots are used to swarm social media communities, generating fake engagement on a topic to trick an algorithm into thinking the fringe topic is trending.
This is how a random conspiracy on 4Chan can develop into a mass issue being debated at large and slandering a celebrity – or anyone, for that matter.
How did bots make us believe Taylor Swift was MAGA?According to Rolling Stone, behavioural intelligence startup GUDEA launched an investigation into the Taylor alt-right discourse.
They examined over 24,000 posts and 18,000 accounts, spread across 14 digital platforms, starting from the day after the Life of a Showgirl dropped (October 4) until two weeks later on October 18.
Research concluded that just 3.77% of accounts drove 28% of the conversation around the Eras Tour star and her new album.
Calling it ‘evidently coordinated’, these accounts drove the most inflammatory content, first appearing on fringe sites like 4Chan before migrating to other apps.
Over 75% of the conversation was from fake accounts (Picture: Ashok Kumar/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)
During the first spike in discourse, 35% of posts came from accounts that appeared to be non-human aka bots.
After the second spike, focused on the Opalite necklace, around 40% of posts came from inauthentic accounts, reportedly making up around 73.9% of the total volume of conversation.
Keith Presley, GUDEA’s founder and CEO, estimated around 50% of the internet is made up of bots, stealing profile pictures to mass manufacture outrage.
How did Swifties make things worse?So the bots began to accuse Taylor of being alt-right, and Swifties began to argue with accounts — bot or real — who reiterated that comment.
Despite earnestly trying to defend the star by hitting back at the conspiracy, Swifties just contributed to the spread.
‘If there is a hyper-engaged online community – and Swifties are definitely that – information, even if it’s false, can take off and then reverberate,’ Kieran explained.
The bots will keep spilling out whatever they’ve been programmed to say, no matter how many times you argue with it, so all you’re doing is amplifying its voice on the algorithm.
Fans defending her only boosted the topic in the eyes of the algorithm (Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)
By trying to help, they amplified the misinformation (Picture: Kevin Mazur/TAS18/Getty Images)
Rohit said: ‘The goal isn’t to win a debate with intelligence; it is to drown out the truth with noise, leaving everyday people arguing with a spreadsheet.’
Once the falsehood has reached the masses outside of the initial hyper-engaged community, it’s too late to stop the noise as content creators from across the political spectrum weigh in.
Whether you were left and believe she is a Nazi, right and welcoming her to the club or a confused Swiftie, engaging with the discourse only made it bigger.
‘If something is shocking or unexpected, it gets a lot of attention, a lot of individual takes, and before you know it, people start to believe it might be true, ‘ Kieren said.
The GUDEA researchers wrote: ‘This demonstrates how a strategically seeded falsehood can convert into widespread authentic discourse, reshaping public perception even when most users do not believe the originating claim.’
The conspiracy was entirely manufactured by fake accounts (Picture: John Shearer/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management )
The best thing to do is simply not engage and the noise will die down (Picture: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
Parasocial relationships are not going away any time soon but perhaps fans should take a page out of Taylor’s — or Beyonce’s or any major star’s — book and just simply not engage.
Next time you see absolute nonsense spouted about your fave, double-check the account and think ‘Do I really need to give this person any more attention?’
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As Taylor herself said: ‘The rule of show business is, if it’s the first week of my album release, and you are saying either my name or my album title, you’re helping.’
The same rule applies to misinformation, bots, and conspiracies.
The only thing left unclear is who launched the bots in the first place and what could they have to gain by suggesting the biggest pop star in the world is secretly a fascist?
Metro reached out to Taylor’s team for comment.
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