The Algorithmic Economy and the Era of Misinformation
- Kaley Evans
- Jan 5
- 11 min read
How false narratives are planted and seeded by actors, how they spread by unassuming audiences and how we can change the discourse on the internet.
**Editors note: At the time of writing this (December 31st, 2025), Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, was the most-steamed album in a single day on Spotify, and closed out the year at the top of Billboard’s Top 200 albums.
What a year it was for online discussions that kept you glued to your phone. From the Coldplay-Kiss-Cam-Callout in July, to the Taylor Swift breaking the internet yet again not only with her engagement announcement but for another announcement: the release of her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl. But that all that online discussion glitter quickly turned to dust once her album dropped in October, changing from the usual discussions of the musical direction to a noticeable quick shift into accusations of her association with white supremacy groups. And these accusations were ultimately found to be baseless and hadn’t been a part of her previous album drops. So, if you found yourself wondering how we went from the usual Taylor-Swift-album-drop discussions to Taylor-is-associated-with-Nazism, then you’re not alone.
Rolling Stone magazine was the first to break the news on the research behind what transpired with The Life of a Showgirl. But it also connects to Blake Lively and her current legal battle and ushers in a new era and economy – The Algorithmic Economy and the Era of Misinformation. The parallels of online discussions between the Depp v. Heard trial and the Swift v. Nazism discussion bare a strikingly similar discourse to one another, which we’ll get to that in a bit.
Depp v. Heard –
This is not the first time social media and false stories have manipulated narratives in the court of public opinion, and the 2022 Depp v. Heard defamation lawsuit is no different. Depp sued his ex-wife, Amber Heard, over claims she had made in a 2018 op-ed published in the Washington Post. The highly televised civil trial not only spurred countless memes, it was also the target of narrative manipulation; a claim which further fueled accusations by Heard’s legal team of swaying the jury, who had not been sequestered for the duration of the trial.
Throughout the six week trial, online narratives portrayed Heard as a liar followed by accusations of staged photos of her injuries. And it’s important to note, many of those narratives, including the ones we just mentioned, were never substantiated by the facts of the case. However, that didn’t stop those narratives from spreading online of an emotional Heard went viral. Even brands like Duolingo and Milani joined in, which if that sounds weird for a business to join in on this, then you are correct.
Now, it’s fair to say that Depp wasn’t immune to online narratives himself, but his were not as noticeably damning as the online commentary towards Heard. Heard’s lawyers for the case even claimed those narratives were leveraged by Depp’s team to unfairly sway the jury’s perception of Heard to deem her as an uncredible witness. And not only that, this civil case was also infamous for its massive social media influence – mainly TikTok – and the intense public engagement that ultimately led to Depp largely winning the case. The Depp v. Heard lawsuit quickly became a pop culture juggernaut reminiscent of the OJ Simpson criminal trial in 1990s, dubbed “The Trial of the Century”.
Look, it’s easy to look at both the Depp v. Heard and the OJ Simpson trial and say both these trials occurred during very different times – and for the large part, yes, that is correct. But, despite one trial being criminal and the other civil, what both these trials have in common is the leverage of media to promote false narratives as a bid to sway a decision. And that very same theme is emerging in another upcoming civil trial involving two other notable actors, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. But we’ll get into that in a bit.
GUDEA’s findings –
If you’ve been living under a rock, it almost seemed impossible to have escaped the barrage of marketing surrounding the release of Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, Life of a Showgirl. Since making the announcement of its existence back in August, there was a flurry of non-stop marketing and online conversations leading up to its release in early October. But all that press, in its careful curation Swift is known for, quickly changed to discussions that turned extreme in many ways that many people found bewildering.
Online discussions surrounding the album initially began as scrutinizing the artwork on the varied versions of the LP and CD, to the merch that rolled out to accompany her latest era. But all of that discourse quickly changed seemingly overnight. Social media posts began to crop up accusing Swift of implicitly endorsing the MAGA movement -- a movement in which she has vehemently denied publicly in the past. Other posts began to surge in velocity alleging the use of the word “savage” in the song “Eldest Daughter” was racist. This was in addition to the lightning bolt charm necklace on her merch page along with the lyric “My mama told me it’s alright/You were dancing through the lightning strikes”, from the song, “Opalite”, were all references to white supremacy groups. Despite Swift’s track record of challenging false narratives against her carefully branded image, these posts largely focused on specific word choices, which served to further fuel their virality. Swift, nor her team have commented on this story or immediately returned requests for comment.
All these findings stem from recent research conducted by the for-profit behavioral intelligence tech startup, GUDEA, who track how reputation-damaging claims emerge and go viral on the internet. They concluded a cluster of coordinated “inauthentic” accounts pushed the most inflammatory content about Swift in the lead up and subsequent release of her album. Additionally, they found “significant user overlap” in the bot-accounts that were directly responsible for manipulating Swift’s narrative.
GUDEA analyzed 24,679 posts from more than 18,000 users across 14 platforms and found the narratives -- like those we just mentioned -- originated from “inauthentic” users that triggered actual authentic engagement either from Swifties dismissing these conspiracies, or from others who tried to contextualize these claims. “The pattern of inauthentic provocation [to] authentic user discourse is a hallmark of successful narrative manipulation,” the research says.
Often originating on sites such as 4chan or KiwiFarms, these engagement-provoking narratives were infused into the Swift conversation before migrating onto social media platforms via bot-accounts. From there, they organically sustained themselves by gaining further algorithmic virality from the authentic engagement. These narratives in turn became algorithmically reinforced, with their visibility increasing with each authentic engagement. “The false narrative that Taylor Swift was using Nazi symbolism did not remain confined to fringe conspiratorial spaces; it successfully pulled typical users into comparison between Swift and Kanye West,” the researchers wrote. Which is an incredibly worrisome thing to have happen: To take narratives that were posted on fringe forums, originally isolated from the rest of the internet, and seeding them on mainstream platforms, where the algorithms picked them up, and gained virality based off the authentic engagement they received.
GUDEA’s research identified two distinct spikes in dates involving the misleading activity related to Swift. During the proceeding days after the October 3rd release of Life of a Showgirl, GUDEA’s data identified approximately 35% of those false narratives to have been generated by “inauthentic” accounts. And, between October 13th and 14th, that number jumped to a staggering 40% of posts generated by inauthentic accounts, with conspiracy content making up 73.9% of the total volume of the conversation. The research found the album rollout and the subsequent commentary surrounding it, demonstrates how a “strategically seeded falsehood can convert into widespread authentic discourse,” which acts to reshape the public’s perception “even when most users do not believe the originating claim.” Which is an alarming thing to hear: That despite many of the readers’ disbelief in the actual false narrative posted, they inadvertently fuelled the narrative’s virality simply based on its engagement, ranging anywhere from commenting on it to even sharing it. And that can have real-world consequences for those these false narratives involve.
“This is something that we’ve seen escalate on our corporate side – this type of espionage, or working to damage someone’s reputation,” says GUDEA founder and CEO Keith Presley. And Keith has a point: regardless of whether a false narrative gets debunked, the damage has already been done to who the false narrative is about.
The Blake Lively connection –
GUDEA contends that despite all this data, they do not know the identity of the individual or group behind the Taylor Swift false narratives – and it’s quite possible that we may never know. But one thing they did find was “significant user overlap” in the accounts that manipulated Taylor Swift’s Nazi narrative and those involved in a separate yet similar campaign against Blake Lively.
The legal and PR battle between Lively and Baldoni began after the press tour for the movie they starred in together, This Ends With Us. Shortly after the press tour, Lively began to face a barrage of criticism online relating to comments she had made in a resurfaced interview. A YouTube clip posted by the journalist who gave that interview, Kjersti Faa, titled “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job”, quickly went viral on social media, painting Lively as rude and difficult. Flaa has denied having anything to do with Baldoni and his alleged smear campaign.
In Lively’s court filings, she alleges Baldoni and his team attacked her public image shortly after the now-infamous January 2024 meeting where she, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and Baldoni discussed the “hostile work environment” during the filming of the movie. Lively accuses Baldoni of orchestrating a plan to “destroy” her reputation through a “sophisticated, coordinated, and well-financed retaliation plan” against her. She further argues Baldoni used a “digital army” to post social media content that appears to be authentic and ”…designed to eviscerate Ms. Lively’s credibility” by engaging “…in the same technique to bolster Mr. Baldoni’s credibility and suppress any negative content about him.” Sound all too familiar? That’s because Baldoni hired the same crisis manager Johnny Depp hired during his civil litigation. It’s important to note, Baldoni and his legal team have strenuously denied any involvement in such campaign. A court date for this lawsuit has been set for May 2026.
So, by now it’s pretty clear the pattern that’s emerging with these smear campaigns. According to GUDEA researchers, the intersection these sets of accounts that shared all the negative posts about both Lively and Swift suggests “a cross-event amplification network, one that disproportionately influences multiple celebrity-driven controversies and injects misinformation into otherwise organic conversations.” In other words, all these narratives combine across various platforms to create an ecosystem. And these ecosystems comprise of network user communities, who exert cross-event influence to escalate these narratives with other “inauthentic” user accounts from one narrative which often appear prominently in another that shifts personas depending on the topic, platform, and narrative tension. Think of it as the cross-over episode no one asked for.
While the true intent behind these false narratives remain unknown, the playbook of these deceptive narratives is more than transparent: to persuade authentic users to engage with these posts as a means to boost their reach in any given digital ecosystem. And the Swift and Lively overlap demonstrates how network user communities have the ability to influence anything from album sales to even going as far as to destroy someone’s reputation. “…that’s going to get rewarded by the algorithm. You’ll see the influencers jump on first, because it’s going to get them clicks,” says Georgia Paul, head of customer success at GUDEA. And Georgia is right: the moment these false narratives get planted, picked up by bot-accounts, and gain algorithmic attention through authentic engagement, the virality of these narratives continue their velocity with influencers posting and sharing these narratives.
We’re not going to get into a debate over influencers and fact-checking – we’ll simply run out of time. But for what it’s worth, these narratives, regardless of whether they’re true or not, are designed to elicit an immediate emotional response. And this emotional response is what causes you to engage with the post, which only adds more fuel to its algorithmic dumpster fire and furthers its reach. So, is there anything we can do about this, and if so, what steps can we take to reduce, and even eliminate, these false narratives from dominating our feeds?
Remedies –
Look, this can all sound a bit overwhelming; from the idea that we’re all collectively being sold manufactured narratives as a bid to manipulate media on an unassuming audience, to rigged algorithms designed to show you more content that elicits immediate emotional responses. What if we were to tell you there are easy, actionable steps that you can take today to help combat the rise of rage bait and false narratives? Would this change your perspective away from the seemingly David-and-Goliath type of battle the tech companies want you to believe?
One thing you and I can do is to take inventory of the immediate emotional response a post elicits. If your initial emotional response to a post is extreme and immediate, chances are, the post you’re reading is a false narrative containing little-to-no factual evidence. Because that’s what it’s designed to do. So, if your initial response is extreme, there’s a very strong likelihood it’s fake.
Another step you can take to combat these engineered false narratives is to look to see who is posting this information. Is this a reputable source for information, or is it an imageless profile with little-to-no followers and little-to-no actual posts all seemingly from a short timeframe? If the answer is yes, chances are it’s a bot account whose sole purpose is to generate and spread false narratives.
A third action you can take is one that may not initially win over fans but is good for your overall mental health and hits the tech companies where it hurts. And that is to simply reduce your time on these platforms. By now we’re all well aware that social media platforms generate a large, if not all, percentage of their revenue from ads, with close to 98% of Meta’s revenue generated through ad sales. By eliminating or reducing the amount of time you spend on these platforms not only increases your mental health, as one study by CHEO Research Institute, and published in Psychology of Popular Media, found. Youth who reduced their social media time to only one hour a day had a 20% reduction in symptoms of depression and a 26% reduction in symptoms of anxiety. Now, more research is needed to concretely link these findings, but their initial results are compelling. Not only does reducing your exposure to social media reduce symptoms associated with depression and anxiety, but it also takes away from those who stand to benefit financially from you being on these platforms, as well as those who spew out false narratives.
Conclusion –
By now, we’ve discussed how planting false narratives regardless of who is posting it can have massive effects on how that information is started and shared. The cross-event amplification these false narrative ecosystems create demonstrate a level of “sophistication” in the expanding industry of reputational harm across social media and have the potential to not only cause reputational harm, but they also have the ability to influence and sway public perception – and in some cases, even juries. Of course, all of this is highly concerning, given their ability to influence and sway legal decisions to even public policies, which is a really scary thing when you think about it. “…there might be other nefarious actors, not US-based, who have reasons to see, ‘If I can move the fan base for Taylor Swift….does that mean I can do it in other places,” says Presley.
And Presley isn’t wrong: he even went as far to “half-jokingly” comment GUDEA’s research found “the internet is fake”. And with Meta removing factchecking from their platforms in favour of “Community Notes” -- similar to that of Twitter/X -- only serves to increase the frequency of these false narratives by shifting the responsibility onto its user-base, which isn’t a reliable source.
And it seems as though governments are slow or even reluctant to pass laws regulating sites that seed false narratives. But until then, there are things that we can do to reduce our susceptibility to these false posts and prevent them from spreading. From reducing the time we spend on these platforms, to verifying the sources of posts, to the awareness of the immediate emotional responses we have towards them. Because what Keith Presley laments, “They know what they’re doing.”
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