Politico roiled the rap world with a report on Monday that accuses rap mogul Nicki Minaj of employing a bot army to amplify her political posts on social media. However, a look at the “report” Politico relied on to buttress the claim appears to show flawed results.
Worse, the report, created by an outfit calling itself Cyabra, is directly linked to Minaj’s rival rappers Jay-Z and Cardi B.
The Cyabra report claims that Minaj’s social media reach is created by an “inauthentic amplification” of her political views on her X account. The group also insists that Minaj employs 18,000 fake bot accounts, aimed at amplifying Minaj’s recent pro-Trump political posts on social media.
“Over a two-month period, Cyabra conducted a targeted analysis of engagement activity on Nicki Minaj’s official X account (@nickiminaj), focusing on political-related posts and assessing the authenticity of the accounts interacting with them,” the group claims in the report.
“The investigation identified a materially elevated level of inauthentic activity within the comment sections of these posts. 33% of the engaging accounts were assessed as fake, a proportion that is substantially higher than baseline levels typically observed in organic social media discourse,” they added.
“Based on the scale, concentration, and behavioral alignment of the inauthentic activity identified, Cyabra assesses with high confidence that a coordinated fake campaign was actively amplifying political content on Nicki Minaj’s X account during the period reviewed,” they concluded.
However, some have noted that this purported “disinformation research” organization is funded by music industry insiders who are Minaj’s rivals. The Cyabra council includes David Wander, Chief Digital Officer at Jay-Z’s company Roc Nation, and Mike “G” Guirguis, a partner at United Talent Agency (UTA) who represents Cardi B — both of who have a vested interest in discrediting and harming Minaj’s career.
Trump advisor Alex Bruesewitz called the Cyabra report “100% BS” and pointed out that Politico didn’t bother to mention that the company that created the bot report is connected to David Wander and Mike G. Bruesewitz goes on the blast Politico’s Jason Feeferman as a “fake news hack” for not reporting on the connection between Cyabra and Nicki Minaj’s chief rap rivals. He calls Politico “unethical” for not reporting all the facts.
There are other problems with the Cyabra report, too. Deep down in the report, the group claims that several actual, real X accounts are fake, including the X accounts of Turning Point USA, President Trump’s official X account, and U.N. Ambassador Michael Waltz’s official account.
Critics of the Cyabara report say that if the report misidentifies these accounts as fake, how many more are similarly misidentified.
Several high profile X commentators have also blasted Politico for its flawed reporting, including Dom Lucre and Bo Loudon.
For her part, Cardi B is blasting Bruesewitz for connecting her to the Cyabra report, and she claims her agent is just a Cyabra investor who has no sway over the company. And she is now threatening to sue Bruesewitz for mentioning her in connection with the whole story.
Bruesewitz, though, says he is not overly worried about the rapper’s threats.
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