Taylor Swift Smear Campaign Probe: Firm Denies Pop Star Paid for Investigation

A report examining online Nazi-related allegations targeting Taylor Swift has sparked a second controversy of its own.

After the findings suggested the accusations were part of a coordinated smear campaign, critics quickly claimed the investigation itself must have been paid for by Swift or her team.

The firm behind the study has now firmly pushed back. GUDEA, an AI-driven behavioural intelligence company, says Swift was never a client, did not commission the research, and had no involvement in the investigation or its publication.

GUDEA Denies Being on Swift's Bankroll

The report provided clarity on what sparked the study: a French journalist on TikTok contacted GUDEA, an AI-driven behaviour intelligence firm.

According to a GUDEA representative, the report was initiated internally and is part of their efforts to track 'coordinated online manipulation and narrative amplification'.

What the firm does is to consistently keep track of the emerging patterns of 'inauthentic behaviour across major cultural, political, and unusual spikes in accounts pushing identical messages about alleged Nazi imagery'.

In the study about the Nazi allegations on Swift, GUDEA shared that they find the same 'coordinated influence activity' in other coordinated smear campaigns.

They also clarified that Swift and her team did not commission the study. It was GUDEA who also contacted a Rolling Stone journalist to report their findings. They also mentioned that insights from their 'paying clients are strictly confidential' and that these clients use the insights to be part of their 'high-level strategic brand communications program'.

They also added that their report on the Nazi allegations against Swift is part of their ongoing 'independent research' to assess the health of online ecosystems.

Why the Smear Campaign Did Not Convince Fans

Upon the release of the Rolling Stone Article, comments argued that it felt like reading a PR crisis statement, and that its timing worked for Swift, who released two episodes of the docuseries just a few days later.

At the same time, critics felt offended for being called 'bots' when their critique of The Life of a Showgirl was entirely genuine. A Reddit community dedicated to the It Ends With Us lawsuit says it's 'frustrating' to be called a bot when it's the Swifties pulling the strings behind Swift's PR move.

Others were also sceptical about the methodology used. Besides finding out about the startup company and the number of people, with fewer than 10 LinkedIn employees, working for it, critics also say GUDEA was not being transparent on how they concluded. It also did not help that the firm was an AI-powered company, leading others to believe it was an ad for their services that used Swift as an example to gain clicks.

However, GUDEA defends its methodology by saying to the journalist that their methodology 'relies on widely accepted techniques for detecting coordinated inauthentic behavior, including network mapping, message-propagation analysis, and account creation clustering, etc.

The journalist who wrote the piece on the Rolling Stone also confirmed that neither Swift nor her team paid her to write the study, backing up GUDEA's statement that it was the firm that reached out first.

'GUDEA contacted me to offer an exclusive on their research because of Rolling Stone's extensive coverage of Taylor Swift and because I cover internet culture and conspiracy theories.'

Editors of Rolling Stone also greenlit the article because they found it to be an 'interesting glimpse into how bad actors can manipulate online conversations about public figures'.

For now, the firm maintains that the investigation stands on its own merits. Whether critics accept that explanation may depend less on the data and more on how much faith they place in institutions analysing the internet itself.