Was the Taylor Swift ‘Nazi’ Controversy A Coordinated Bot Attack? EMERGENCY EPISODE!

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
There are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this
is there are no Girls on the Internet, so this
is kind of an emergency episodes, so I have to
bring in the production dream team for the first time

(00:25):
ever on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
We have both Joey our resident.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Fwifty Yes hello, Bridge, of course.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
I'm so glad here here, and producer Mike, our resident
data analyst data scientists. What do you what is your
preferred how do you identify?

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Uh, social scientists identify as a social scientist, as a
psychologist if pressed. But I'm like pretty cross disciplinary. But
data analyst is certainly correct. I have analyzed a lot
of data and I continue to. And yes, thanks for
having here, Joey. It's so nice to be on an
episode with you. It is the listeners might not realize. Yeah,

(01:05):
this is our first episode on air together and in
fact this first time we've ever heard each other's voices
in real time. Yeah, I say.

Speaker 4 (01:12):
People keep asking for behind the scenes what's going on.
Mike and I have never actually had a conversation face
to face.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
We'll only commun to kidding with each.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
Other over email and over hearing each other on the podcast.
So this is a really big moment for the Tangodi universe.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Yeah, tengoty, first worlds are colliding.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Back when Taylor Swift released her latest album, we did
a few episodes talking about some of the online controversies
and conversations that that album sparked, namely the idea that
she was sort of pushing tred wife sensibilities, this was
her sort of big tread wife pivot, and then later
the idea that one of the pieces of merch from

(01:52):
her launch, this necklace with lightning bolts at a star
on it was actually full of coded Nazi dog whistles
and references. I remember regretting deeply that Joey, that you
were not on that episode, because as a Swifty I
am certain that you probably were plugged into that conversation.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
What were your thoughts?

Speaker 5 (02:11):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, you know.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
I think I gotta say joe did a great job
of representing the swifty community and that episode, the choes
of the podcast are really hold in holding it together here.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
But yeah, no, I think I agree.

Speaker 4 (02:29):
We've talked about bridget We've talked about this off my
bazillion times listeners. I did at one point, Sun bridget
a bunch of Taylor Swift songs that you should listen to.
I don't know if she ever actually listened to them,
but I tried.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
But I'll be like I guess I'll just run through my.

Speaker 4 (02:44):
Swifty credentials real quick to let y'all know where I'm
coming from. I have been hesitant to call myself a
swifty in the past. I'll come and go embracing it.
I'll explain why.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
But I would.

Speaker 4 (02:55):
Yeah, I'm I'm a pretty big tailor swap fan. I
would call myself a swifty. I like, I'm right at
the age where like I grew up listening to her,
like Fearless was the first.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
Album that I ever owned.

Speaker 4 (03:05):
I've gone to three of her tours, one of which
was the Era's tour. I was at the Chicago tour
where she played the Lakes of course fitting so I
was right by like Michigan and.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
Of course Bridgett.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
As you know.

Speaker 4 (03:15):
My other favorite thing to talk about is like fandom
culture and how fandom culture and like politics have sort
of become intertwined in the past like ten years, uh,
both of like the fandomification of politics and this like
politicization of fandom in a lot of ways. I basically
I've been an online fandom spaces my whole life. I

(03:41):
never was a big like I'm going to follow this musician,
like like I'm really into like following the music. I'm
never is into like following their personal life. So I
was a little bit on the outside for that. I
think I definitely know people that are more like into
like Taylor and what she's doing whatever.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
I never was like that level of Sookie. Again, no
disrespect to that.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
I get like we all have our like things that
we're obsessed with and I'm gonna get into later. I
think like there is sort of an unfair kind of
ridicule of Swifty is when I think it comes to
the fact that anybody you meet basically has like some
sort of fandom thing that they're really really into.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
Going back to the actual question.

Speaker 4 (04:15):
When this album came out, I will be real, I
didn't love it. I think like, this is the first
time I think she's released an album, and like a
lot of my friends that are Swifty, my sister's huge,
huge Swifty, and she immediately was like.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah, it's not good. So I think that was interesting.

Speaker 4 (04:33):
I didn't really love Tortured Pote Society either, Like I
think there were a couple of songs on in Nights
I like, but other than like I Folklore evermore, I
was a nineteen eighty nine Fearless era Dot Fearless nineteen
eighty nine reputation, like those are my favorite albums. So yeah,
I think when when this album dropped, on the one hand,
I was sort of.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
Like, you know what, I didn't really like it. It's
not for me.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
I'm going to move on.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
I know this is going to turn into a huge
internet debate, and lo and behold, it did as I
think we're going to get into.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, I mean, you really summarized it well. And this
is what I said in the episodes that we did
about Taylor Swift after the album had just come out.
I think that there is something that happens with Taylor
Swift where she hit so many different intersection points, gender politics,
the ethics of being a billionaire, class, race, all of

(05:25):
these things that we know were these tensions in our society.
She sits at the intersection point of all of them.
And so in one of those episodes, I said that
I was becoming concerned and I thought the conversation was
being I don't think I used the word manipulated. I
think I said it was it felt right for manipulation.
I didn't have any proof, it was just my sense.

(05:46):
And part of that was because you know when a conversation,
you can just tell when a conversation feels volatile, it
feels emotional, it feels difficult to participate in in kind
of more casual ways. Those are the conversations, whether it's
Taylor Swift or something else where, I just think, ooh,

(06:09):
this could be easily manipulated because there's so many emotions
involved in the conversation.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Yeah, no, totally agreed.

Speaker 4 (06:15):
I think Bridge I have the same feeling as you
where I think again, I listen to this album, I
sort of like this isn't for me.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
I'm gonna go back to listening to folklore.

Speaker 4 (06:26):
But it was like, I know there's gonna be discourse,
and immediately it was like, oh, this is going in
a bazillion different directions. I think there is a level
of like, hey, there is a conversation that we had here.
I think a lot of the boys we're getting get
into there is something to be talked about.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
But yeah, it is like, I agree, and whenever Taylor.

Speaker 4 (06:43):
Swift comes up, like she is just such a popular
figure and that unfortunately, like a lot of our kind
of cultural ideas about women get projected onto her just
by being like the most famous woman.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
But yeah, no, one hundred percent agree.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
It's very easy to make Taylor Swift kind of the
stand in for like white ladies, you know, like like
there's something about her that I think is just it's
very easy to project a lot of stuff onto her.
And so you know, when I was watching the discourse
get quite heated about Taylor Swift and this the Nazi

(07:20):
necklace stuff, I felt this way then and I feel
it even more strongly today that I want to be
very clear that even though I had a sense that
some of the conversation might have been being manipulated in
some way, whether by bots and authentic accounts, much of
it was real people making genuine critiques of Taylor Swift.
Like we got in the episode that we did about

(07:42):
the lightning bolt necklace. We got listeners weighing in in
the Spotify comments.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
Thank you for that.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
And it's not like those were bots, right, those were
people that I can visually see, like I know this listener,
this is a listener of the show. They are real
people engaged in real, genuine discourse because they think it
is important and so so oh, I want to make
that super clear. And I feel more than ever that
has been that reality has been confirmed. And so the

(08:08):
reason why we're talking about this again is because this
week a company called Goudea put out a report about
the conversation being driven about Taylor Swift online. What did
this report find, Well, here's their executive submarine. Between October
fourth and October eighteenth of twenty twenty five, the public
conversation surrounding Taylor Swift in her album The Life of

(08:29):
a Showgirl evolved into a highly complex narrative ecosystem. Goudea
analyzed twenty four thousand, six hundred and seventy nine posts
from eighteen thousan two hundred and thirteen users across fourteen platforms,
identifying a polarized online environment shaped by a mixture of
organic cultural discourse, symbolic reinterpretation, and targeted inauthentic activity.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
A key finding of this analysis is the role that what.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
They're calling inauthentic narratives played in triggering authentic engagement. The
false narrative that Taylor Swift was using Nazi symbolism did
not remain to fringe conspiratorial spaces. It successfully pulled typical
users into comparisons between Taylor Swift and Kanye West, who
we know is basically like a Nazi now is like

(09:13):
designing clothing lines with swastikas on them and releasing songs.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
That are odes to Hitler.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Right, So, the report finds this demonstrates how a strategically
seated falsehood can convert into widespread authentic discourse, reshaping public
perception even when most users do not believe the originating claim. Additionally,
DUDEA found a significant overlap between accounts pushing the Swift
Nazi narrative and those active in a separate AstroTurf campaign

(09:40):
attacking Blake Lively. This overlap reveals a cross event amplification network,
one that disproportionately influences multiple celebrity driven controversies and injects
misinformation into otherwise organic conversation.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
Not surmise to hear that it there's the overlap with
the Blake Lily Lively situation, And.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
Two something that's also kind of is drawing up is.

Speaker 4 (10:06):
Like I know We've done a story on Sangodi before
about the whole like Lena Dunham thing where there was
like a desideration about her having.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
Sexually assaulted her sister. Not true, yes, very.

Speaker 4 (10:16):
Much, but it was taken from like a grain of
fact and then turned into something else. I feel like
a lot of times the Taylor Swift sort of discourse
is similar, where it's like, there's things you can criticize.
I'm like, and we're gonna add to that. There's plenty
of things you can criticize about her and about her
music and about the way that she presents herself to
the world that doesn't necessarily mean like sprad wife Nazi,

(10:37):
you know, like it's like, yeah, from step one to
step like I don't know ten thousand something. This did
also make me think about was so this album came out?

Speaker 3 (10:48):
I want to say it was the October this year, right,
it was? It was earlier this year.

Speaker 4 (10:52):
I can't point so when this started, but something that
I've noticed, like within the last couple of months, primarily
looking at I don't really use Twitter anymore. Twitter is
just a nightmare of misinformation. Instagram reels for me has
gotten like I don't really, I don't know, I will
just if I'm using reels, I'm just like my list scrolling.

(11:13):
I've been getting so much like rage bait content that
is very like specific to topics that I'm interested in,
which has been really interesting. Something I keep going back
to is like keep getting these videos that are like
specifically about trans people that feel very like yeah, like
they're trying to create like rage bait content, and I'm like,
I can't tell if this is legit, if this is

(11:33):
somebody just trying to get interactions with their post, or
if like this is somebody's actual beliefs that they're putting
out there. Anyways, that's to say, I feel like I've
seen an increase of this type of content that is
specifically banking on the fact that that's how you get used.
That's how you tap into a current hot topic issue,
you say something really crazy, it gets what you use,

(11:53):
you get money from that. I don't know if like
the fact that I'm seeing such an increase of that
lately also a sort of hype this.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Well, you bring up a good point that there's you
know this this report focuses on accounts that are creating content,
you know, authentic human accounts and then inauthentic accounts that
maybe they're bots, maybe not. But what's left out of
this report entirely and off of the whole discourse is
the role of the platforms themselves, you know, specifically like Meta,

(12:22):
who is really good at targeting to our very individual interests,
and so, you know, even this report that finds that
there was a lot of coordinated inauthentic activity that wouldn't
be successful if the platforms didn't allow it to be so.
And so I think that's an important thing to keep

(12:43):
in mind, as well as the fact that, like, you know,
the Blake Lively connection here, I think does is a
really important part of this analysis because it it makes
it more general and it's not just a conversation about
Taylor Swift, which gets connected to so many other conversations,
but it really is about like who is controlling these

(13:07):
bots or these accounts rather not bots maybe bots, but
like these accounts that are not behaving like typical humans
and just really aggressively and extremely often retweeting this rage
baby content across different celebrities. I think that's a nice
feature of this study.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, I completely agree, and I this is a little
bit of a tangent.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
But I think I think I've talked about this on
the podcast before, and.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
It doesn't make me feel good to say it, but
I kind of got taken by what we now know
was largely an inauthentic campaign around Amber Heard. Basically at
the time, I was like a low information person when
it came to the whole Amber Heard Johnny Depp thing,

(13:56):
and I would be scrolling TikTok or scrolling in st
or whatever, and I would be surfaced this content that
was all rage bait, all lies, all super inflammatory, all
really to make Amber Heard look bad. And it was
content that made that led me to believe, Oh, the
popular sentiment is that everybody, it's just understood that Amber

(14:19):
Heard is a horrible person in lie it's on me
that I did not do more investigation and that I
was just like, Oh, I guess that's the I guess
that must be the truth. And it wasn't until actually
looking into it that I was like, wait a minute,
I am I am being manipulated about a topic that
at the time I had not been bothered to kind
of look deeply in. And I really realized, even as

(14:41):
somebody who thinks of myself as pretty savvy talks about
the Internet for a living. We are all very susceptible.
Like I was very susceptible. Now Luckily I didn't go
on a tirade being like Amber Heard is a liar.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
I didn't.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
I didn't.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
It was just content I was seeing in my home
that I was just like, oh, there it is, okay,
move on.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
But like none of us are immune to this, I guess,
is what I'm saying. Agreed.

Speaker 4 (15:05):
I mean, I think sort of a similar thing with
like the Blake light Lively case, which I think a
lot of people did, like there was a lot of
which again going back to sometimes it's it's people where
there's like there's the grain of criticis some more starting
with and then it spirals into something else. But yeah,
I know it is Like I still to this day
we'll see like constant bashing Amber Heard, and I'm like,

(15:27):
what's going on? I'm like, what's the point?

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Like come on?

Speaker 4 (15:30):
Like yeah, I'm like there's so many bigger come.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
On alone a whole deep dive expose called who trolled
Amber All? Like I feel like I feel like we
have the receipts on what happened now like give it up.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
It's big of both of you to, you know, own
up to getting taken. But I bridge it to your point.
I think, you know, we're all being manipulated all the time,
Like this is what I think. One of the big
takeaways from this report is that these accounts are out there.
They are pushing narratives. Some of them might be false,
and you know, once we finally learn the truth or whatever,

(16:09):
we realized that like, oh, we have been taken for
a ride. But a lot of them, like Joy said,
aren't necessarily even false. Like I'm thinking about the stories
that we covered earlier this week about the student in
Oklahoma who got a zero on her paper and got
thing mad about it, like that was a true story.
Wasn't important enough that like everyone in America should be

(16:30):
talking about it. Probably not, and yet here we are.
That is a great point.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
And I wanted to make this point from the report
really clear because it's a great segue. So the report
reads the data set reveals a multi layered structure in
which cultural commentary, political accusations, symbolic interpretation, and conspiratorial narratives intersect.
While the majority of users behave typically so we're not bots,
just we're regular people saying things that they actually believed

(16:56):
On the Internet. Three point seventy seven percent exhibited non
typical behavior amplifiers and accounted for twenty eight percent of
the conversation volume, suggesting coordinated influence. This narrative environment umfolded
across major platforms including Twitter, slash x, Reddit, blue Sky, TikTok,
and fringe ecosystems like four chan and Kiwi Farms, creating

(17:18):
a cross ecosystem narrative network capable of rapid escalation. So
just to like underline that, I believe the main takeaway
here is that while some of this was inauthentic or
bot accounts amplifying inauthentic narratives that triggered real people to
engage in real conversations and real discourse.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
So again, I'll probably say this one hundred more.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Times throughout this episode, because it's a misconception about this
study that I'm really trying to squash out. The study
is not saying everybody who engaged in this conversation is
a bot that can be dismissed. What they're saying is
a small percentage of this was bot or what they
say as like atypical or non typical behavior from these accounts,

(18:02):
which could be bots, But the majority of the conversation
was authentic conversation from real people. And so to Joey's
point about fandoms, some of the way that real people
engaged with this kind of content that might have been
raised by nauthentic users were doing so to defend Taylor Swift,

(18:23):
to criticize the irrationality of this like Nazi necklace conspiracy,
and to contextualize the incident through historical conflicts with Kanye West.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
And so, yeah, I would I.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
Would call that like Swifty fan behavior of like like,
I like Taylor Swift.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
I have seen what I believe.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
To be an untrue conspiracy about her. I am going
to engage with this conspiracy content to debunk it, and
thus I am actually sort of helping a probably inauthentically
generated narrative to spread, even though I myself, I am
a real person, I'm not a bot.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
Yeah, definitely, I mean it.

Speaker 4 (19:00):
It's easy to get sucked into, especially as somebody who
is interested in pop culture is interested in these conversations, Like,
it's easy to get baited into those conversations. I think, like,
I don't know, like, especially when this album came out,
I had to kind of stomp.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
Myself from literally there was a point.

Speaker 4 (19:16):
Where I was just like, I'm just not goetna engage
in any of this because I was like, I know,
this is like pointless, Like I don't know what, Like
at the end of the day, it's arguing over something
that an album I didn't even really.

Speaker 3 (19:26):
Like did you argue over it? You argue over it like.

Speaker 4 (19:31):
With individuals in my life. But like, I'll be real,
like there was I had made a stupid joke about
one of the songs in Tortured Poets Society when that
came out, and like I got like a bunch of
negative comments on that TikTok, and I was sort of
like I was just making fun of this fun line,
Like it wasn't that big.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
Of a thing. I love Taylor Swift. I said that, like,
but yeah, no it was. I was just like, I
don't I don't know.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
Maybe this is a sign that I'm like mature as
a person. That I was like, I actually need to
put the phone down. But that being said, I don't know.
I yeah, going back to what you were there is
something really interesting to me. Again, having spent like my
whole life in like online fandom spaces.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
I think there also is like a weird overlap. We've
talked before on the.

Speaker 4 (20:18):
Show about like I was coming of age when like
Tumbler was the big thing.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
A lot of my like.

Speaker 4 (20:24):
Early introduction to a lot of like political ideas was
also from Tumbler.

Speaker 3 (20:28):
At the same time I was looking at like doctor
who Edits.

Speaker 4 (20:33):
I think there's like because these online spaces, because so
much of this is happening online, there is there ends
up becoming this overlap with people's discussion of political issues
of like socio political issues whatever. So I think there
is an extent to which people like people almost sort
of see there fandom is like I need a fight
for this social justice, which is not.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Always a great thing.

Speaker 4 (20:55):
Like I think I'm usually somebody who I'm in more
like fictional media fandom spaces, a lot of times is
people trying to be like I have to prove that
this piece of me.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
I got in an argument.

Speaker 4 (21:05):
I did get an actual argument with somebody recently who
was like basically we were talking about like the character
the Punisher, who is like a classics example of a
like you already know where this is.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Going and I was, yeah, it's a conflicting it's not
a character.

Speaker 4 (21:20):
That's why he's interesting. But they were like, no, he's
this like leftist radical, like anti racist, and I was like, no,
he's not, Like you don't he doesn't have to have
the values that you have, Like it's okay to like
be a progressive person and enjoy this character who's like complicated.
I don't know, Like I think it's interesting when that
ends up coming up in real people too, Like it's.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
The whole Like is popstar feminist? I don't know.

Speaker 4 (21:44):
There's there's stuff Feler Swift is on there, stuff chew SIPs.
Swift is said that it has been yes, very feminist,
very empowering for women. She's also I don't know, she's
a human woman who makes mistakes and like I'm not
looking to her to for my like political praxis. But yeah,
I know, I think with the stuff with like Kanye
and all that, I think there was sort of a
like Weed either to be like a staunch villain and

(22:06):
a staunch her in situation and I'm like, yeah, Kanye sucks,
Like I don't You're I'm not disagreeing with that, Like,
but like I don't know.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
Celebrities.

Speaker 4 (22:21):
I don't really think any of them are probably like
particularly great people.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
They like just from the nature of like getting that rich,
you kind of have to be a little bit flaw
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (22:32):
But yeah, no, it is like a weird, like there's
this weird sort of tendency I think lately for people.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
Maybe it's just a reflection of how like messed up
the world is right now, but.

Speaker 4 (22:40):
Like people really do want to like see these figures
like having all of their beliefs, and it's like, at
the end of the day, they're probably not.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
Yeah, and that's always been that way.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
Like I don't know, I completely agree, and I think
we'll talk about this more when we get deeper into
the report, But I do think it's created a kind
of dynamic where defending Taylor Swift is easily confused for
active for kind of activism it is.

Speaker 4 (23:05):
Yeah, well it's the thing too where I think, like,
because what we were saying before about how she sort
of represents this like the idea of womanhood, the idea
of specifically white womanhood, but womanhood in general, like when
people talk about massage. Yes, she has been subject to
a lot of misogyny throughout her career. That being said,
feminism isn't just defending Taylor Swift like I don't know.

Speaker 6 (23:26):
Yeah, let's take a quick break at our.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Back and this idea from the report, where you basically,
by engaging with this kind of content, real people were
boosting it and helping it to spread. This is like
part and parcel of online manipulation, campaigns of inauthentic provocation
leading to authentic user discourse as a hallmark of successful

(24:05):
narrative manipulation, it demonstrates how small bursts of coordinated activity
can reshape cultural perception by forcing mainstream audiences to respond
to extremized framing. Okay, so if you are a diehard
Swifty listening, you might be thinking, okay, so does this
report mean that anybody who is critical of Taylor Swift

(24:25):
is just a bot and whatever criticisms they raised can
just be ignored because it's bot shit. And the answer
is no, absolutely not, not even a little bit. So
we do have some criticisms of the report, which we'll
get into in a moment, but even taking it at
face value, I want to make super clear that the report,
as you just heard in that summary, does not suggest

(24:47):
that all or even most of the accounts driving this
kind of Taylor Swift conversation online were bots. And I
want to really underline that because one of the responses
I've seen online from this report is that the report
is saying that anybody who criticized Taylor Swift as a
bot and it can be disregarded. I've seen a lot
of black women saying I have been critical of Taylor Swift,

(25:08):
and I am not a bot.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
I'm a real person with real issues.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
I understand where that's coming from, which again we'll talk
about in a moment, but I just want to make
clear that the report is not saying this. And so
if anybody is saying, oh, well, I told you so,
all these criticisms about Taylor Swift were just coming from bots.
You were stupid for even engaging with it, that is
not correct. So in this report, they basically categorized different

(25:33):
buckets of Taylor Swift conversation along the lines of the
risk of those conversations being manipulated by inauthentic narratives. Topics
that we're in what they call their low risk cluster
are topics that were largely human driven and not really
driven at all by bots. So this was things like
people being uncomfortable with some of the racialized messages, I guess,

(25:54):
and some of the Swift's songs like Eldest Daughter and Opalite,
it was human saying that stuff, not bot side note,
I am actually not listen to any of these songs.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
So I'm I I gather from the.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Discourse that a lot of it was about racialized narratives
in these songs, but I'm gonna need Joey to confirm
that for me or just icky like icky narratives in general.

Speaker 4 (26:16):
Yeah, I think, I right, I think because I'll be
like of this discussion again, I didn't listen to the
album and think her oldest means she's a triad wife.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
Now this means she's a racist trod wife the song
opal Light, though specifically there were a couple of I
think it was the situation where I think she just
due to being.

Speaker 4 (26:46):
A white woman who has achieved this level of wealth
and you know, probably has mostly been surrounded by other
white women from similar backgrounds, maybe she just didn't like
think through it and not like I'm willing to give
her the benefit of the doubt of that.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
There was a little bit like.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
The Looking at the lyrics, it's sort of like this
feels icky, like there's something about it that I'm like, Oh,
I don't know about that.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
I'm crediting to this again. I'm gonna give her the
benefit of the doubt.

Speaker 6 (27:13):
Again.

Speaker 4 (27:13):
This is celebrity I don't know in person. I don't
know what her fucking beliefs are. I don't know anything
about her. We've never met. Shocking, guys, I've never personally
met Taylor Swift. I'm willing to throw this to Just
like she made some metaphors that she thought were really artsy,
not really realizing they could be read that way, Like
this is the same way.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
I like, there was a.

Speaker 4 (27:35):
I'm not gonna out her from what she actually said,
but like my straight friend a couple of months ago
had like left a comment on my Instagram and the
words she used.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
I was like, you cannot say that. I was like,
delete that right now.

Speaker 7 (27:45):
That's not for you.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
Yeah, I was like, you just called me something very transphobic.
Like I was like, I know that was that what
you met? But yeah, I'm like to say, I think
that's probably what happened.

Speaker 4 (27:57):
That being said, though, I'm not gonna like criticize anybody
for being uncomfortable with that.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
That is our right.

Speaker 4 (28:05):
What's there's a piece of art that's in the world.
People are allowed to interpret it. However, you want something
that recently happened that I think made me sort of well,
I was on like the other side of this was
going back to this whole like having to take a
step back and be like, is this really an issue?
When the Sabrina Carpenter album came out, It's most recent
Spurita Carpenter album, I like, I'm not a big fan

(28:26):
of her, and I think like I had a realization
where I was like she to me is where I
was like, similar, do I think i'llow a lot of
people take the sea Taylor Swift where I was like,
m She's definitely very talented.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
She's not for me, Like her music is not for me.
It's not I'm not the audience she has online.

Speaker 4 (28:39):
And I think like when that album came out and
the cover drop specifically, I was sort of like, Okay,
I don't love that. There's a lot of criticisms I have,
but I can see how this can be in behoffering
to some people.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
And it was. However, then I saw the conversation quickly turn.

Speaker 4 (28:53):
There were like people online that were like, if you're
uncomfortable with this, your anti sex work and anti women
and an ant sid and I was like, what are
we talking about? Like I was just like, oh, that
was a weird choice.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
I want to do it, but good for you.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah, I mean whatever happened to just being allowed to
not like something or being like this is not for me.

Speaker 4 (29:13):
I think that's my point where I'm like, I wouldn't
actually have an issue with this, Like I don't like
end discussion whatever, it's not the album's thought for me.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
But I was like, well, now I feel like I have.

Speaker 4 (29:21):
To come back and be like, no, guys, I'm not
secretly a misogynist or anti sex or anti sex work
or antsie. There was one particular TikTok that I saw
that was just like listing off all these things and
I was like, this.

Speaker 3 (29:33):
Is a straight white girl.

Speaker 4 (29:34):
Why what does this have to do with transphobia and
sex workers rights?

Speaker 3 (29:39):
And I like, I.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Don't know, it was crazy, but yeah, and I think
that's kind of like what the report. It doesn't come
out and say this but sort of contextualizing it. I
feel like the temperature has just really been turned up,
and so you can't just really have a convert. It's
more difficult to have normal good faith discourse where like, oh,
this album wasn't for me, this cover wasn't for me,

(30:03):
like that how you miss articulated taylorists. But that's how
I would describe her, Like I don't have ill will
toward her. She's just somebody who I recognized makes music
that is not for whatever reason for me. So it's
it's not it's not an artist that I pay attention
to musically a lot. And so I think the fact
that the conversation online has gotten so volatile about these

(30:25):
things is exactly speaks exactly to your point, Joey.

Speaker 3 (30:29):
Mike, you looks like you were gonna say something and today, Yeah, well,
I'm just curious now about the lyrics and these songs
open lay Nolla's daughter, Like I had no idea that
like this was part of the controversy. I guess that
they're like racialized lyrics in there. And I mean, it's
also interesting that those are two of the topics that

(30:50):
were not promoted by these inauthentic accounts, and yet I
didn't hear them, And uh, you know, that's interesting, and
it makes me wonder if perhaps the conversation about those
was in fact more nuanced than thoughtful, like Joey was describing, like,
you know, it's a piece of art and so people
can legitimately criticize it. Maybe it wasn't, you know, polarized

(31:16):
off the rails. Some of it probably was because we're
talking about the Internet here, but like, uh, you know,
you have to wonder if that nuance is why the
bot networks did not pick that up and instead seized
on some of these other claims. Yes, that's a really
good point.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
And just to add on to that, one of the
other sort of low risk clusters that's report identified where
the conversation was pretty much entirely just real people having
real discourse in an mostly normal, chill kind of way,
was around Taylor Swift being a billionaire and the sort
of ethics of that.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
Right.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
That was real people raising real issues alongside real people
talking about the you know, racial imagery and some of
the issues with her songs. The report specifically says that
these topics remade stable and free from inorganic influence. So again,
if someone is trying to tell you that, oh, all

(32:15):
of the issues raised about Taylor Swift that was all bots.
These specifically were not raised by bots, They were raised
by real people. Then they identify the medium risk clusters.
Now this was stuff like comparisons of Taylor Swift to
Kanye West, who again is like basically a Nazi. Now,
the report found that this cluster showed the clearest transition

(32:36):
from inauthentic triggers to authentic community discourse. However, it was
still not bot users that were dominating this cluster of conversations,
and so other things in this bucket were conversations around
Swift and cultural appropriation, which I again I am not
a scholar of her work, but apparently that is a

(32:58):
topic of conversation. Her use of aa ve, a rivalry
that she might have with Beyonce, which like, are they
rivals for real? This is again a lot, a lot
of this is like new information for me that I'm
hearing for the first time.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
Well, they're the two most famous women, so they must
be rivals, right, I know, right?

Speaker 4 (33:13):
I bet they like each other. All women hate each other.
All women hate each other.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
Bridget don't y'all know this by now? Get have two
powerful women in the same room. Yeah, no, I mean
even like reading that I personally because I've heard this
before Bram, Like, I I.

Speaker 4 (33:30):
Can't think of an example of Taylor Swift using aave.
That being said, I haven't followed her entire career. Maybe
she did, Maybe I'm just missing it. But I'm like,
whenever people claim that, I know people are also mad
about like the Shake It Off music video and someone
the dancing of that. I remember watching that time too.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
I remember that. I remember that Yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
Like that one too.

Speaker 4 (33:50):
I was sort of like, Okay, I can hear the criticism,
but it doesn't really seem like the I don't know again,
I think.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
And the r with Beyonce, like I that is something.

Speaker 4 (34:02):
I'm like, I don't think I've actually, Yeah, they're the
two top artists in the country. I mean, if we
want to go back to the whole Kanye of it all,
Beyonce famously brought Healers lived on stage, yeah, two thousand
and night after all that, so I'm like, it.

Speaker 3 (34:14):
Seemed like they were pretty still from where I'm standing,
but I don't know.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
Uh, and they're both billionaires.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
I don't think either than a sweating it like I
think this.

Speaker 4 (34:24):
I'm also like I love the like negative criticism that
I have Taylor Swift.

Speaker 3 (34:28):
I also have Beyonce, Like I love Beyonce too.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Oh, get me started.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
It's a billionaire like I can make a whole episode, Joey.
I'm a big Beyonce fan. Beyonce and I have. This
is a side conversation. This is a conversation for another episode.
Beyonce and I have gone through a little bit of
a cooling off period.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
I just think they're well, we don't even get into it.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
We don't into it.

Speaker 3 (34:53):
I'll just say this. I have yet to piss off
the bay Hive.

Speaker 4 (34:57):
I've had a lot of other fandoms my comments section
angry at me over small remarks.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
So I hope this isn't the thing that finally.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
Is Yeah, we can move on.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
I don't want anybody to get like bees and lemons
in our Instagram comments over anything that we're about to say.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
Yeah. It does make some sense though, Like if I
was to design an authentic campaign just trying to like
gin up outrage and get a bunch of clicks online,
it makes a lot of sense to come up with
a story about Taylor Swift and Beyonce having like a
rivalry with each other, because then I get to talk
about both of them, right, and then I'm gonna get

(35:34):
picked up by algorithms that of people who are interested
in easier. That's a really really good point.

Speaker 4 (35:40):
Yeah, you're getting you're getting people with the bmog and
their username, and you're getting people with Taylor's version and
parentheses after their username and your comments making your life
miserable for however long fay aside to pay attention to
that total.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
Non sequitary question that you can cut if you need
to for time, which as a fandom expert, which fandom
do you think any It doesn't even have to be
Beyonce versus Tylor Swift?

Speaker 3 (36:07):
Who which fandom is the most rabbi?

Speaker 2 (36:09):
The fandom that.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
You're like, I I will never piss them off. I
will never say a thing. Who you look like, you've
got an idea in your mind, your head.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Here's the thing. And you must also consider jugglers. Oh
that's a good one that I don't they do.

Speaker 4 (36:22):
They're like, they're okay, maybe this is just the generational differences, but.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
That's probably true. Yeah, Like your grandfather.

Speaker 4 (36:30):
Is listening, actually appreciate you're you're you're bringing up something
I could spend an entire episode talking about. But with
this whole conversation, I juggle too, so they gotta keep
going back to because again I have I said this
where I was like, I have been hesitant to call
myself a swifty in the past, and I think it's
because of the reputations of swifties. Get My first like
fandom fandom that I was into as a small child

(36:52):
was Star Wars and you have never met crazier.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
Actually I take that that. I like, here's the thing, because.

Speaker 4 (36:59):
It is again it's there's something that makes swifties like.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
Compared to like the bets.

Speaker 4 (37:06):
Fandom beyond they beatles fans like have you ever talked
to a middle aged man about like whatever their band of.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
Choice that I don't know? And then on the other side, yeah,
again like Star Wars fans like literally like ruining the
lives of like child actors.

Speaker 4 (37:28):
On the other hand, I think that there is just
something about online fandom culture.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
I was talking to a friend like a week.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
Ago about she just got into like DC comics for
the first time, and she was like, I'm really nervous
to post anything on TikTok about this because I feel like,
people are gonna be mad that I haven't read like
X y Z things, and I'm like, you're talking about
a character that's been around since pre World War Two.
There's no way you can read all of the things.
This was a basillily different versions, Like there's just something

(37:58):
about fandom culture that turns people.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
I love it again.

Speaker 4 (38:03):
I don't love that. I love fandoms again. I will
defend fandoms.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
I've my whole wall of posters.

Speaker 4 (38:10):
Behind me with like there's an interview with a vampire one,
there's a DC one. There is a point where you
kind of have to be like, I'm gonna take step back.
I'm not gonna gauge the discourse anymore. Somebody just left
a very angry comment on one of my videos because
I made the mistake of saying something about how Anakin
Skywalker is a flawed, morally gray character, which you know,
I didn't think was that crazy of a of a.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
I was talking about the pun track, and I was like,
that's like the whole thing of like many movies.

Speaker 4 (38:40):
The most unhinged comments I ever got from fandom for
making a like offhanded joke about it was Adam Driver.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
Fans like to this day.

Speaker 4 (38:46):
And it was because I said that he did a
bad job. If there was like a god, this is
so old, there was like some it was like Vogue
or something. There was like a video of a bunch
of male actors reading one of the scripts from Clueless,
and Adam Driver was just like getting nothing.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
And I made some men about being being like yeah,
he's doing terror and.

Speaker 4 (39:02):
I had to turn off my Twitter notifications for like
twenty four hours. I was just like what, Yeah, anyway,
So that's just say I don't think there's anything particularly
like Rabbit about the about the Swifties or Beyonce fans
or whatever.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
I think just because a lot of times they're young women.
I mean Beyonce, Yeah, would like Beyonce to Beyonce.

Speaker 4 (39:26):
Mostly it's like women, queer people. Yeah, I think because
it's them sports fans. Oh yeah, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
Have you ever talked to an Eagles fan.

Speaker 6 (39:37):
Like I?

Speaker 3 (39:39):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (39:39):
So anyways, my point is I just think that people
are awful inherently, and there's something about fandoms that makes
us and I don't.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
Know my favorite discussion of fans and now I'm going
to take us on a tangent h John Hodgman of
The Great Judicial Podcast. Judge John Hodgman once articulated the
difference between a nerd and a hipster, which I feel
are like two different types of vandoms. Like a nerd
is someone who like they both have deep arcade knowledge

(40:07):
of something that most people don't know about. But a
nerd is like excited to share it with you and
like bring you in and help you understand why they
get so much love and joy from this thing. And
a hipster wants to wield it like a weapon to
like hit you over the head and make you feel
like you aren't as good. You don't know about the

(40:27):
comic from like nineteen thirty nine where they went to
like the Negaverse or whatever. Wait, sorry, Mike, you don't
know about that comic from nineteen eighty nine. I know
about it. I'm just saying there are like other people
who like maybe don't like they're not like real fans,
you know, yeah, not like that, but yeah, exactly, But
I always think about that distinction.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
I like that framework that's so.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
Real though, That is exactly.

Speaker 4 (40:51):
It's like they're, yeah, let's get into a bigger conversation.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
To do There is just like such a pit.

Speaker 4 (40:57):
Just going back to the idea of art, which again
with these songs like there could be a star that
you could put out there that like, like I've had
this app with with Going Going Mad, Taylor Slift. There
are like I like, I one song I heard that
I really like a Starcher. It's a little bit of
a corny song objectively, but it's I really like it.
It's really meaningful to me.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
It was like, really, I I it's a it's a
it's a good song, and it like it meant a
lot to me at a point in.

Speaker 4 (41:20):
My life where I was like going for a lot
of stuff and I like had it on Like I
was driving one time and I had it on the
car and my friend was like card with me and
they were like, oh my god, like this is stupid,
Like what are you like listening to? And I was
like all right, like I was sorry, but I had
a moment where I was just like we have different
interpretations of this.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
That's okay, this isn't for you, this is for me.
I'm gonna ask you. And I was sort of like, hey,
I really like this song. Can you not make fun
of it?

Speaker 4 (41:42):
And they were like, oh shit, Yeah, they also showed
me plenty of stuff that I'm like, I don't get this,
but I'm glad that it means something to you.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
At the end of the day, art is supposed to
mean different things to different people, and like.

Speaker 4 (41:55):
There is I think what you were saying, like the
hipster kind of side of it is like forgetting that
and being like, well, everybody has to have my point
of view, yeah, which is just some of how the
world works.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
I don't know, right, it's just like a way to
exclude people and like protect your exclusive access to like
whatever this thing is.

Speaker 7 (42:17):
More. After a quick break, let's get right back into it.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
So I'm pretty sure. What were some of the high
risk clusters.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Well, the high risk clusters these are the clusters that.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
Were heavily seated by non typical accounts and drove the
downstream effects with authentic users were things like yep, the
Nazi symbolism, conversation, conspiracy accusations, political reframing, and mega allegations,
and then a bucket that they call relationship politicization parentheses.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
Kelsey NFL.

Speaker 3 (43:03):
I think some of it's the tradwife the tradwife stuff. Yeah,
I assume that topic is just like anything to do
with Kelsey is just kind of rolled up and shoved
into that bucket. Yes.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
So have you all seen the response to this study online,
because in my pockets of the Internet, the response has
been massive. I don't know that I've seen something kind
of instantly polarized the Internet in such a stark way
in a long time.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
Have you all been paying attention to any of the response? Yeah,
I I've only seen the stuff that you showed me, Bridget,
because I am like so far offline these days. I
look at Reddit, which does not talk about any current events.
It's all like history subreddits and blue Sky, which is
its own thing like screaming about this or that, but

(43:52):
not Taylor Swift.

Speaker 4 (43:53):
I guess I haven't just used I unrelated to this.
It's sort of been taking a break from social media
this week. However, I did and to bring this up
with a couple of people in my life over the
last twenty four hours, and I was like, oh, I'm
working out a Taylor Swist story and they immediately were like, oh,
they're only stone article.

Speaker 7 (44:09):
I was like, uh yep.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
So it was waking it like like I it's making
its way around. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah, And one of the things that I sort of
can't not talk about with this is the racial implications
at play, because I think a lot of the women
who were crick not all, but a lot of the
folks who are critiquing Taylor Swift are black women people
of color, and I think a lot of the people
who perhaps self identify as Swifties who were very vocal

(44:37):
about the fact that, you know, like, hey, anybody who's
criticizing her, this article says they were all bots, which
again is not true. I think, you know, you can
already sort of see how maybe these different types of
people are talking about Taylor Swift, but they're really talking
about other stuff race, gender, class, politics, and then the
conversation kind of becomes a stand.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
In for all of this.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
And I so typically saw a lot of black women saying,
you know, I am not a bot, I'm a real person.
This this was my actual critique, and I want to
make that clear. One of the things that I think
this study perhaps did not make super clear is the
authentic voices who those folks were and what they were saying.

(45:21):
I think that that perhaps gave a bit of credence
to people who were like, oh, you don't even need
to listen to these people there their bots anyway, And
so one of the big questions that people have been
asking is like is this study legit?

Speaker 2 (45:33):
Like should it be taken at face value? What's the deal?

Speaker 1 (45:36):
So Mike and I have been in conversation with the
authors of this study. We're going to have a deeper
dive episode into the methodologies that they used, but I
wanted to talk about sort of what people are saying
about this study to give you a sense before we
go into those those deeper conversations. A lot of the
folks who were genuinely critical of Tara Swift were feeling

(45:57):
kind of suss about this study. So I wanted to
sort of get into some of the buckets of critique
that I have seen floating around online about the study.
The first is that the methodology that the study put
together is just not a sound one. Mike, as our
resident data analyst, what can you tell us about the
methodology behind this report?

Speaker 2 (46:19):
As a data scientist?

Speaker 3 (46:20):
Uh So, for one thing, an analysis like this requires
tons of decisions on the part of the analyst. You know,
which posts and accounts are they going to look at,
what time period are they going to consider what are
they going to measure, how are they going to measure
that all of those decisions are going to have a
big impact on the results and the conclusions. And for
studies like this like there isn't a single standard way

(46:42):
to do it, because the best methodology depends on the
particular research questions that they're attempting to answer. And so
a lot of the criticism of their methodology that I've
seen is quite vague, where the person posting the criticism
isn't really being specific about which of those analytic decisions
they object to, and instead are just dismissing the whole

(47:02):
thing is like biased or flawed, which feels a little
lazy to me. There are definitely some thoughtful exceptions to that,
where people are raising like various specific and very valid
concerns about the study, and we are going to talk
about that, and certainly the study is not perfect, and
interpreting the results of even the best studies, though, requires

(47:23):
being honest about acknowledging their limitations, right, So one also
needs to consider the practical limitations of what is possible
with available resources. Analyzes are difficult and complicated and time consuming.
In this tailor swift data set the researchers examined eighteen
thousand posts. It would have been great if they'd had

(47:46):
a trained human expert manually review each individual post and
look at the social media history of the account that
posted it, what sort of things they talk about, who
they're connected to, and then make it a termination about
whether it's a real human or an inauthentic bought account
pretending to be an ordinary human. But a study like
that would cost thousands of dollars, maybe tens of thousands

(48:07):
of dollars. And you know, I personally believe that the
integrity of our online spaces and discourse is critically undervalued
and there should be much more funding to do robust
studies to examine who is manipulating our discourse. But unfortunately
that's just like not the world that we live in

(48:29):
right now in twenty twenty five America, and funding for
that kind of research is not abundant to say the least,
right and in fact, to my knowledge, this report from
Goudea is literally the only published analysis that provides any
data on online discourse about tailor Swift narrative during this

(48:49):
timeframe at all. Right, I haven't done the exhaustive search.
Maybe it's out there. I'd love to see it at
please send it if you have it. But to my
knowledge is the only thing we've got. And so given
that extreme of available data, I think it would be
foolish to completely dismiss this study because it is imperfect.
I would much rather rely on data, even if that

(49:10):
data is impacted by limitations and caveats, than rely one
hundred percent on vibes and my own personal experience with
the algorithm that I'm looking at. Does that make sense?
It's not really an answer I have more, but I
did want to pause there. Yeah, it does make sense.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
And I should mention this too, that Mike, you and
I were able to speak to an outside expert, Molly Dwyer,
who works for a kind of similar company that does
similar kinds of reports, and we'll hear from her. We
have a fascinating conversation. Also, Joey Tumblr fan Tumblr is
what got her into this work in the first place,
which is very interesting. What's funny is that when I
was trying to figure out what expert voices I wanted

(49:49):
to turn to to help put together, you know, our
conversation about what's going on in this report, you were
like oh, I found this person, Molly Dwyer. They'd put
together a similar report about bot noow works impacting the
conversation around the cracker barrel logo redesign or remember that.
And I was like, Mike, I don't think that some
data scientist is going to want to chime in on

(50:11):
a report that she had nothing to do with.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
She's not gonna we can't ask her, but she's not gonna.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Want to like tear apart somebody else's report.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
And boy was I wrong.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
And you were like, that is all scientists like to
do is to not not tear into I shouldn't say that,
but like look at and talk about the work of
other scientists. You were like, it did not as a scientist,
It did not surprise me at all that she was
very happy to talk about the findings of this report.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
Absolutely one hundred percent. I mean we as scientists, we
are trained to be skeptical. We are trained to find
the reasons why your data does not support your conclusion, right,
because by doing that we eliminate the bad data, and
then we're left with like the data that does actually

(50:59):
support the conclusion. And that's how we know things about
the world, right, And so I think, you know, rather
than a binary question of whether the methodology for this
particular report about Taylor Swift discourse is sound or and sound,
I think the better question is, you know, is the
methodology sufficiently robust that we have confidence in its conclusions

(51:20):
or that the conclusions are at least in the neighborhood
of correct. And in my opinion, I think the answer
is yes. And you know, like you said, we spoke
with Molly Dwyer. Listeners will get to hear from her
on Tuesday, and I really encourage them to listen because
she really had a lot of good stuff to say.
You know, she generally agreed. She was like, yeah, their
approach is like pretty fine.

Speaker 7 (51:41):
You know.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
There are places to quibble, certainly, like oh, maybe I
would have done this a little bit differently, maybe the
exact percentages are a little off, but like the overall
pattern of the results seem pretty well supported and also
importantly in law with other studies that have looked at

(52:02):
similar questions in different contexts, which is an important way
for us to have confidence in analyzes when you know
it's not possible or practical to do a perfect design
of the study that you might want to, and so
just briefly, there are two aspects of the approach that

(52:23):
they use here that I do want to emphasize. One
is the algorithm that they use for classifying accounts as
either typical or atypical. Atypical sort of synonymous with like
a body account or an automated account. And then the
other piece of their analysis that I wanted to highlight
was how it was longitudinal that they didn't just look
at the mix of typical and atypical accounts posting about Swift,

(52:45):
but they looked at how that mixture changed over time,
and they found an early surge of posts from atypical
accounts right after her album launched, which kind of helped
set the tone for the narrative some of those high
risk topics that you talked about earlier. Those atypical accounts

(53:05):
were then later eclipsed in volume by more typical users
as they joined the conversation and it became like a
viral trending topic. And then later those typical humans kind
of lost interest in this story because you can only
talk about a lightning bolt being a piece of Nazi
iconography for so long before it becomes boring. Those humans

(53:29):
like stopped posting, and so the proportion of the unauthentic bots,
the inauthentic accounts increased at that point is they were
like trying to keep the conversation going. And I just
think that that kind of temporal analysis adds a lot
of nuance to help us understand the role of bots
and inauthentic accounts and shaping these conversations, nuance that really

(53:51):
gets lost in black and white social media posts that
either want to claim that this report either totally vindicates
Taylor Swift or is completely flawed and tells us nothing.

Speaker 7 (54:04):
More.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it, Mike.
Something that you bring up and came up in our

(54:24):
conversation with Molly as well, was that I've seen this
criticism that, oh, this isn't really like a data company.
They're not data scientists. This is a PR firm pretending
to do data analysis. And when I asked Molly about this,
she had actually a very interesting answer, which was that
it is true that companies like hers, companies like Udea

(54:46):
are often working on behalf of clients or brands or celebrities,
but that doesn't really make them PR. And she made
this great point that we don't really kind of like
what you were alluding to before, we don't really have
a lot of places anymore where you can get like
academic insights into the Internet.

Speaker 7 (55:04):
Right.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
There used to be a very robust community and field
of study for researchers and academics of all stripes and
all kinds to like look at API and see what
was going on online. And a lot of that is
really dried up and come to an end. And so
what we do have and the absence of that is
these private companies, and so they're not perfect.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
I'm not saying that I wish.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
That we had more robust, well funded spaces to look
into what's happening online. However, one of the big criticisms
that I also saw of this report was that they
did not really make their data set transparent, and so
I could not like replicate that. I could not say
I want to dig into this myself and repl and

(55:45):
use their data set to replicate their results to confirm them.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
Right.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
And when you and I were talking about this, Mike,
I was like, well, I kind of get it. On
the one hand, like this is a consequence of more
and more private companies doing the research into what's happening
online to tell us what's happening on the internet. However,
these are private companies, so they might have less transparency.
They might be able to say, oh, we were not
going to make this public because it's a proprietary secret whatever.

(56:12):
To be sure, there are private companies that do operate
with a better level of transparency, But I do think
that this is sort of a function of having to
depend on the whims and the particularities of private companies
to provide robust research into what's happening on the internet.
Do you know what I'm saying totally? I completely agree.

Speaker 3 (56:30):
I a half percent agree that I wish they had
released their data and made it publicly available. Like I
can't really think of a really compelling reason not to.
I mean, I guess again, it would be extra expense
and time for them, So that's a concern, right. They
would have to probably take some steps to make sure

(56:52):
that there wasn't any sensitive information in there, that they
weren't exposing people's privacy. But companies do this, you know,
it is possible, and it's it is unfortunate that they
didn't make it transparent, because, uh, that is one of
in my opinion, the most valid criticisms of this study

(57:13):
is that we we kind of have to take their
word for it. But at the same time, it's like
they don't have some sort of intense competing interest here,
Like they're trying a company like Gudea, which you know,
works on behalf of clients, to you know, measure narratives

(57:37):
around their brands. Uh, they would put they put out
a report like this.

Speaker 4 (57:41):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (57:42):
Maybe a little bit because they want to be a
good actor in society, you know, we can hope that
that's part of it, but also because they want to
get some pressed for themselves as a company that does
good quality analyzes and shares insightful conclusions.

Speaker 6 (57:59):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
And so they they have a motivation to get it right,
you know. And so the idea that they would just
like make things up doesn't really hold a lot of water.
And especially in this context that you described, where companies
like Reddit and x and Meta have shut off researcher

(58:19):
access to their APIs, which we used to be able
to use to do this kind of research. Right, It
used to be a very low barrier for a grad
student somewhere or even just like a normal person sitting
at their desk at home. If they had this sort
of question, they could do this research pretty easily using
Twitter's API. But you know, Elon Musk shut that off

(58:40):
because he didn't want people poking around to publish data
about how completely filled with bots their ecosystem is, because
what brand is going to want to buy ads on
a platform that's just like serving them up the bots.
So there's that we lost the API access, and we've
lost so much funding for or the kind of research

(59:01):
that looks into this stuff that we as just like
members of the public, we really have no choice at
this particular moment but to make peace with the fact
that a lot of the data that we are able
to use to answer questions like this are going to
come from private companies. That's just the state of things

(59:21):
until we change it. Yeah, And you know, one of the.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
Other kind of buckets of criticism I've seen floating around
the internet is, oh, Gudea, they're the AI company. They
used AI to put this report together. To me, this
is kind of a weird claim to debunk the whole study,
which I just I don't think it's fair. The company's
full name is Gudea AI, and its website says that
it offers AI services, but it's important to note that

(59:47):
just like other socialisting tools like hootswe or other tools
that maybe you've used.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
This is machine learning and it's not what we call
generative AI.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
So, like a quick and dirty summary of the difference
is that machine learning has been a staple of technology
for decades. It analyzes existing data for predictions and classifications
and decisions, kind of like when you go on the
Netflix the recommended, the recommended shows that's machine learning. The
way that your Gmail knows what emails are spam and

(01:00:16):
filters them out, that's machine learning. It operates on rules
and patterns, while generative AI creates entirely new content through
learning complex patterns from data sets. So think of that
as things like Sora or CHATGPT, which is why it
takes a lot more processing power than just a general
machine learning. So the real difference here is creation versus

(01:00:39):
analysis and prediction. So this company having AI as one
of their work streams doesn't really mean anything, really, Like,
it's not a very I don't think it's even a
real criticism. This is kind of a tangent, But Mike,
you and I got into a whole thing about how
companies will put AI in their name even if they

(01:01:00):
aren't even really AI companies as kind of a marketing term,
even though they're not using AI the way we think
of it, like with Chatgypt And I mean, I don't
think it takes a genius to guess why a company
would do that, Like why I would be like, oh,
my company is podcasts dot AI just podcasts because it's marketing.
It makes people look at them twice. It probably helps

(01:01:21):
them fundraise and get more money.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
I totally get it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
Yeah, I mean, just ask friend of the show eds
a Trone, right, Like a huge portion of our whole
economy is propped up by AI marketing hype. Depending on
what sector you work in, you would be a fool
not to put AI in your company name.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
So I would probably say I mentioned this earlier, But
probably my biggest criticism of the study is that I
just don't think it does a great job of really
breaking down the authentic conversations about Taylor Swift, even though
they make clear that the majority of the conversations that
were happening were authentic people in not bots, just that

(01:02:00):
a lot of the nuance was easily lost there, like
who are these authentic people, What were the narratives that
they actually cared about, What were the narratives how they
How are those narratives moving alongside these inauthentic, bot driven narratives,
Like I can kind of see how people who are
critical of this study are now saying, oh, you know,
the study is saying that everybody who hates Taylor Swift

(01:02:21):
is a bot, even though the study didn't actually say that.
I can sort of get why that's the narrative that
is sort of spreading, because the study does not spend
a lot of time flushing out that nuance. Again, it's
the study itself is not in no way saying that
everybody that was critical of Taylor Swift as a bot.
But I get how this seems like a very limited
view into these authentic voices, to the point where people

(01:02:43):
are saying they feel like their voice is being erased
by this report. And I guess I would be remiss
to not mention the Rolling Stone of it all, because
the findings are reported and an exclusive piece for Rolling Stone.

Speaker 3 (01:02:57):
Now, I don't know how this lands for the both
of you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
The person who wrote the piece as somebody who's been
on the show before, Miles Clee, you know, Rolling Stone
is a music publication, right they. I have spent my
fair share amount of time in like celebrity media, and
a lot of times publications like this are working hand
in glove with celebrity pr and so it's hard for
me to say that an outlet like Rolling Stone is

(01:03:23):
going to be impartial when they're recording on a huge.

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
Musician like Taylor Swift.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
Right, people have pointed out that Rolling Stone did a
Taylor Swift takeover during one of her album's launches. They
rated her album five out at five stars. I don't
really have the answer here, but it's a question that
I've seen come up kind of a lot. And the
way that the article is framed for folks who don't
know the people who write articles don't also write the
headlines as the editor. And so Miles Clee who wrote

(01:03:51):
wrote up the piece, it's not the person who wrote
this headline probably, But the headline is Taylor Swift's last
album sparked bizarre accusations of Nazi. It was a coordinated attack. Now,
if when you get into the nitty gritty of what
the report is saying, that's kind of a bold claim
that the report doesn't actually make that that title is

(01:04:11):
saying like case close smoking gun, coordinated attack in a
way that the study when you actually read it, like
like we've all done, doesn't actually make clear. And so
I just you know, in our interview with Molly, who
runs Peak Metrics, a similar kind of social listing company
as the one that did this study, she told us that, like,

(01:04:32):
at baseline, some percentage of Internet discourse is generated by bots.
It's just the reality. It is, unfortunately, in this day
and age, somewhat commonplace. So framing a report that suggests
unusual activity around Taylor's Swift discourse as a coordinated attack
isn't really right because like sadly, bots is just part
of the Internet now, that's just like part of how

(01:04:54):
online discourse happens. And so again you can sort of
see how it sets up this narrative that Taylor Swift
is a of something who needs to be defended, and
she kind of is in a kind of way. But
also what they're describing is at this point somewhat commonplace.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 (01:05:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:05:09):
I think Also so to that headline specifically saying like
bizarre accusations of Nazism, two of things can be true
where it's like I would agree with that that like, yeah,
they're the high risk, like straight up accusations of Nazism,
like she made this necklace, which again she personally didn't make.

Speaker 3 (01:05:31):
The necklace, but like whatever, people were mad about.

Speaker 4 (01:05:33):
The lightning bolts, Like yeah, on the one hand, that
is kind of insane, that is sort of a far
fetched claim.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
On the other hand, like.

Speaker 4 (01:05:43):
Saying this was like saying that the album sparked accusations
of Nazism is like.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
Ignoring some of the real criticism of it, which again I.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
Don't know, like.

Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
I don't know how newsworthy some of it is.

Speaker 4 (01:06:00):
I don't know how like some of it being again
Taylor still writing a song, but I was like, oh,
I like eldest daughter, the lyrics were kind of corny.

Speaker 2 (01:06:10):
I didn't really like it.

Speaker 4 (01:06:12):
I don't think we need a whole article about that.
Like so it's really yeah, like two things can be true.
It can on the one hand, like there were bizarre accusations.
There was a lot of misinformation, but.

Speaker 3 (01:06:21):
Saying that's all it was like yeah, and again that
is just sort of the media atmosphere now.

Speaker 4 (01:06:28):
I mean, like we've done a bazillion episodes about like
review bombing and every form of media like this just
sort of is the reality now, which is a bad thing.
It's a bad thing that it's happening, and we should
be talking about it. But there is sort of a
weird thing that happens then where it's like any criticism
of the thing is just spots or it's review bombing,

(01:06:48):
where it's.

Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
Actually rooted in XYZ. You're a misogynist, you're whatever. Sometimes
people just don't like things. I don't know if we
look if we really look at that title. So I
think the word bizarre in that title is really doing
a lot of work to like just like needle people,
and it's almost like gaslighting, Like like Joey was saying,

(01:07:12):
there are some like valid reasons to be concerned about
some of the content in her album, I gather, right,
Like I don't personally know, but that's the sense that
I get. And so, you know, accusations of Nazism, Okay,
maybe that's a little bit much, But like calling it
bizarre in the headline, I have to wonder if that
one word bizarre really was like a big catalyst of

(01:07:36):
a lot of the backlash to this particular article.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
And when you go back and look at the bucket
of conversation that the report says, Oh, this was not
an authentic This was all just real listeners, real critics,
real people, real voices, real discourse. It was all about
exactly what you two were just talking about, like actually
speaking to the album, the songs that the symbolism that
it brought up.

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
What are you like or not, whether you thought it
was problematic or not.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
And I have to imagine that's not sexy people having
authentic people having like normal discourse, whether critical or celebratory
or somewhere in the middle. I can understand the need
to spice that up because yeah, just normal people having
normal conversation about their views on an album.

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
No, that's not sexy.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
So yeah, I think that we've gotten to this place where,
even when people are just trying to engage in normal
discourse about the world, inauthentic accounts cannot help but throw
a match into that dynamic and light it on fire
and ignite it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
And something about the title I think really probably turned.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
People off of the of what is in this report
from the first blush of even looking at it. I
don't know, I can't say, how many people actually dug
into the report. Most people are probably reading the title
The Rolling Stone Beets and maybe skimming it or reading it.
And so yeah, I'm not surprised that it's Ben's sparked
such backlash, and I guess that's kind of my So

(01:09:04):
what here is that you know, everybody, people who listen
to this podcast, swifties tailor Swift critics, people who don't
care about Taylor Swift at all, just want to have
a robust internet landscape. All of those people coming together
really remind us that the Internet is not just bots
and chaos. It's also real people trying to make real
sense of culture in real time. And so I just

(01:09:27):
think that we got to remember that. I don't think
that this report serves to invalidate anybody's critiques or discomforts
at the might of felt or any of that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
I think it just shows that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:38):
Some conversations are more vulnerable to outside manipulation than others.
It's just not a judgment it's on anyone. It is
just a function and a reality of this current media
climate that we are all kind navigating together.

Speaker 8 (01:09:54):
This feels like the pop culture equivalent of like, I
never leftists online disagree with each other and they immediately
start calling each other like CIA assets or something.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
Yes, it's just hitting me now, maybe this is another
thing the swifties.

Speaker 4 (01:10:13):
Really this is where again we're all we're just living
in a reality where everything is is we fandomized everything.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
So maybe that's it. But I at this like it
just hit me that. I was like, why does this
sound so familiar? And I was like, oh, like.

Speaker 5 (01:10:29):
This is like what I talked to like friends of
the pod Our cool Zone media peeps about like them
being accused of being CIA assets and it's like an
old or not, like you just.

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
Disagree with what they're saying. I don't know what tell you, dude,
People have different idiots. That's how That's how you know
you've made it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
When you get accused of being like a CIA plant,
it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
You you're you've made it, You've arrived.

Speaker 3 (01:10:54):
I just wish we had a little bit more room
for nuance in.

Speaker 4 (01:10:57):
Politics and also in just our ability to enjoy pop
culture because at the.

Speaker 3 (01:11:01):
End of the day, like that's what this is about.
This is about art that we're supposed to enjoy or
not enjoy and just move on with your life. Listen
to something else.

Speaker 7 (01:11:10):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:11):
I think there's some real optimism in this report that
we can find though that like it's actually backing up
that like the humans do want some of that nuance.
And you know this, one of my big takeaways from
this report is just underscoring how much our online conversations

(01:11:34):
are affected by bots and manipulation campaigns all the time.
Like it's not just Taylor Swift, it's not just Blake Lively,
it's not just politics, it's not just health. It's like
all of it, right, and some of it's for ideological reasons,
but I think a lot of it is just people
trying to get engagement for monetization. We saw that when

(01:11:56):
Twitter started revealing people's locations of accounts, and we saw like, oh,
a lot of these like Maga accounts and also like
super leftist accounts all seem to be based out of
like random places in the global South, where like kind
of it's like, maybe these people aren't ideologically invested, they're
just trying to get engagement. And that's just like a

(01:12:20):
feature of the Internet now. And so maybe the more
that we acknowledge that and recognize it as a fact
of life, it will create some space for us to
sort of like look past it and find the other
humans out there for some actual authentic engagement.

Speaker 1 (01:12:39):
Oh what a positive place to end, Joey, Mike, thank
you for breaking this down for me. Nice to put
YouTube in conversation at long last. Of course, Fine, that's
what this is really about.

Speaker 4 (01:12:52):
Guy, episode just kind of yeah came about, but this
is just the three of us wanted to hang out, Violin. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:12:58):
Always again.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
You will have a few more deep dives into the
report very soon. This was just our initial let's just
get on the mic and see what comes out.

Speaker 3 (01:13:09):
Feelings.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
That sounded weird because Mike is one of our producers,
but you know what I mean. Uh yeah, thanks so
much for listening. I will see you on the Internet.
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi, You can reach us at
Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No

(01:13:31):
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Stricklands.
Our executive producer, Tari Harrison is our producer.

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
And sound engineer.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
Michael Amado is our contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Todd.
If you want to help us grow, rate and review
us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check
out the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get
your podcasts.

Speaker 8 (01:14:01):
Oh well and well lip

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