Nicki Minaj’s posting sprees on President Donald Trump and her conservative politics allegedly have been fueled by bots.
According to a Politico report, published on Monday (Feb. 23), Nicki Minaj’s incessive posts about President Trump and conservative-leaning politics are mostly amplified by thousands of bots on social media. The political website shared a report, compiled by the disinformation detection company Cyabra, which identified over 18,000 bots and their coordinated work to take the New York rapper’s MAGA posts on X and elevate them on the platform.
Per Politico: “The analysis, which looked at social media activity from Nov. 11 to Dec. 28, provides a window into how the rapper was able to capture millions of views online and position herself as a celebrity the White House found value in partnering with. Last month, Minaj joined the president at the Trump Accounts Summit — where Trump invited her on stage, showered her with praise and recorded a chummy TikTok video with her afterward.”
Dan Brahmy, the CEO and founder of Cyabra, told the website that the majority of the activity largely came from fake profiles.
“We don’t really see a lot of high volume, high impact orchestration of bad and fake actors within that intersection of the geopolitically driven and music culture,” he said. “It is scarce in our field to see the combination of the bad and the fake online world with the entertainment world.”
The company’s CEO added they found a plethora of inauthentic accounts repeatedly boosting Nicki’s posts with praise that used “highly similar language,” particularly in response to posts where verifiable accounts were criticizing the rap queen.
Overall, bot accounts have always been an issue on X, even predating Elon Musk’s ownership and subsequent name change from Twitter. However, the current dominance of these accounts on the platform suggests there’s no real barrier to prevent them from invading a user’s timeline with propaganda.
Meanwhile, Trump media adviser Alex Bruesewitz slammed Politico’s report and argued that Cyabra’s findings were unreliable due to the company’s alleged relationships with hip-hop personalities who are known enemies of Nicki Minaj, specifically Cardi B.
“This story is 100% BS! @NICKIMINAJ, the most popular female rapper of all time, does not need “bots” to promote her on social media,” he wrote on X. “Politico’s Jason Beeferman is also a fake news hack who fails to disclose that the company that conducted this report, Cybara, is partnered with Cardi B’s agent.”
“I was introduced to Cybara a few months ago by this agent, who, by the way, is a nice guy, but that is a major detail to leave out,” he continued. “I even had dinner with the co-founders of the company, and they offered to do a couple of tests for me. I like them personally, but found their ‘tools’ to be significantly unreliable and their data to be almost worthless. I believe @elonmusk also had them working at X, but got rid of them.”
“It’s incredibly unethical and inappropriate that Beeferman failed to disclose that relationship, given the very public disputes in the music industry,” he added.
“Fake news is the enemy of the people!” Bruesewitz concluded.
Cardi caught wind of Bruesewitz’s posts on X and crashed out on him and allegedly threatened to sue him for defamation.
“Listen, you involved me in something that has nothing to do wit me so now we’re gonna talk about the facts,” she clapped back in a post on X. “Cyabra is a data company with a lot of investors like Mike G, customers like Elon Musk and Pepsi that use that company for data and even has Mike Pompeo on the board of advisors.”
“So what you need to focus on is the fact that data is VERY real and leave me out of your bulls**t. I do not have anything to do with that and I don’t give AF!!” she continued. “Now lie and say that’s not true!!! See what happen when you involve me in s**t that don’t have nothing to do with me? I get down to the GRISTLE of it!! And btw I am still gonna sue you, you wet dirty dog.”
Alex Bruesewitz and Cardi B continued to go back and forth in multiple posts regarding the Politico article about Nicki Minaj. Their heated interaction on X can be viewed below.
