Nicki Minaj has decisively moved into the world of conservative-leaning politics, considering her growing alignment with President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. According to a new report, Nicki Minaj’s surging presence online and the MAGA agenda are mostly fueled by bots on social media platforms.
Nicki Minaj has enjoyed a large amount of fandom online, which sparked the creation of her extremely supportive “Barbz” fanbase. The “Barbz” have not only been validated by Minaj’s interactions with them, but the Queens rapper has even employed them to do her digital bidding.
In a new piece from Politico, the outlet was given a comprehensive report from disinformation detection company Cyabra, which analyzed thousands of bot accounts that worked in accordance to boost Minaj’s posts on X’s algorithm and give them prominence in the space.
From 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.
“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,” said Dan Brahmy, the CEO and founder of Cyabra. “It is scarce in our field to see the combination of the bad and the fake online world with the entertainment world.”
Cyabra’s report combed through over 18,000 bot accounts, finding similarities in language and tone, noting that these were manufactured by this sprawling network of, as Cyabra framed them, “fake profiles.”
While bot accounts have been a persistent problem on the X platform dating back before Elon Musk changed the name from Twitter, their dominance on the social media platform today suggests that the guardrails are completely off.
If Cyabra’s report is to be taken as a factual account of what took place, Nicki Minaj is riding the wave of what may have always been a factor in her popularity on X. The company did say that they’re confident that at least 85 percent of the 18,000 accounts they combed through are fake, with that number possibly rising to 90 percent.
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Photo: Getty
