Diddy Disinfo: How Creators are Using AI to Hijack the Trial for Clicks

been a long time coming. If you're familiar with the music group Danny Kane, which was formed on MTV's Making the Band reality show in two thousand and five, which comb signed to his record label, Bad Boy Records, then you've probably heard rumors about Sean Diddy Combs for a while. And honestly, the women of Dandy Kine were kind of treated like crazy liars when they spoke off about Diddy. But now those same women are speaking up in a

courtroom giving testimony for the States case against him. It's important to know that Shawn Combs is more than just a musician. He's one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood, and his influence reaches far beyond just entertainment, from media

and politics to tech. Combs really does sit at the crossroads of power take Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, Combs was one of his investors, and when questions started swirling about how the platform handled things like racial slurs, Elon Musk tried to ease concerns by pointing to his personal friendship with Ditty, saying, quote, Pok's a good friend of mine.

Then dig into some of the narratives I've seen online and what it all means about power, celebrity and our current online culture. So here's the basics of the charges against Sean Diddy Combs. Combs is facing two different sets of charges, civil charges from mostly women but some men, who are accusing him of a wide range of sexual crimes, and five criminal counts. One count of racketeering conspiracy, two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or corrosion, and

two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. Those five criminal charges are what this trial is about. Basically, the government says that Shawn Combs used his business enterprise to conduct a criminal sex trafficking and kidnapping ring, and that he used his money, celebrity, and power to intimidate the victims and cover up crimes. Now, I have to say I have been really disappointed in how I've seen some folks talk about this but talking about his actions as

like sex parties, which he called quote freak offs. And I want to be super clear, Combs is not facing charges of being freaky or having freaky sex or freaky sex parties. And everybody knows that real freaky people create a culture of consent. What he is being accused of is being the ring leader of a massive criminal enterprise that included subjecting people to a pattern of physical and

sexual abuse. This is according to federal prosecutors. Investigators alleged that over a span of years, Combs would apply victims with drugs and resort to violence and intimidation during days

long sex sessions. He did not do these things alone, according to prosecutors, although right now no one else has been criminally charged in the case, Combs allegedly had assistants, managers, and security staff who made sure that women and male sex workers were present during these freak off events, and that tell rooms where they were staged were supplied with

things like lubricant and baby oil. In fact, if there is one thing that you've probably heard about this case, even if you haven't been paying attention to it, it's that investigators took thousands of bottles of baby oil out of Shawn Combs's home after a raid that they say were used in these sessions. This detail was publicized right after Didi's arrest last year, and this is kind of a common tactic of prosecutions drop a salacious detail that

sure to make headlines. The criminal trial against Combs is ongoing, but here are a few key points from the trial so far. I'll focus on a testimony of four people in this summary. One of the victims at the heart of this whole situation Cassie Ventura, rapper Kid Cutty, who she brisly dated, Cassie's former friend Carrie Morgan, and Cassie's mother. So Cassie Ventura is sort of the voice at the

center of what's going on. The R and B singer was in a personal and professional relationship with Shawn Combs for over decade. Her lawsuit was really the watershed suit that preceded all the other charges. In November of twenty twenty three, she filed a lawsuit against Combs alleging years of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse. The lawsuit also named Combs's businesses, bad Boy Entertainment, bad Boy Records, Epic Records,

and Cohn's Enterprise. Just to day after filing, they ended up settling the trafficking, rape, and physical assault part of the case out of court. They actually settled within hours of Cassie filing, but her willingness to come forward really opened the floodgates for dozens of other lawsuits against Combs. The background of how they got involved with each other, I think is pretty telling. Cassie met Diddy when she was only nineteen years old and he was thirty seven.

They started dating, and a year later Cassie signed a deal with his record company, bad Boy Entertainment and released her first self titled debut album. Now, if you know anything about army music, it has been a long time question of why Cassie's music career never really took off off the way that it probably should have. You know, she put out one pretty successful album and then didn't put out another album for six years, despite being in a creative and romantic partnership with one of the most

powerful locals in music. I remember there was this feeling in the space of like, what is happening with Cassie's career.

Boy Entertainment and Combs's affiliated businesses. Now we've actually seen evidence of some of this. Earlier this year, CNN published footage of Combs attacking Cassie in a hotel lobby. Prosecutors alleged that there was a male sex worker still in their hotel room at the time of the surveillance video recording. Prosecutors in court also quoted text messages from Cassie talking about the bruises and the fat lip that she received as a result of the beating from Combs shown in

the surveillance video. Now, initially, Combs denied all wrongdoing and implied that Cassie was just lying for money until the release of that surveillance footage. He initially was able to get that footage buried because he allegedly paid off the hotel security. After that footage was released, I guess there was no denying it and did. He settled with Cassie basically within the day, but still legal pressure against him.

Mountain I have to be honest, Cassie's testimony in court over the last few days has been difficult to listen to. I should mention she's currently eight months pregnant, so she was giving all this testimony while like heavily pregnant. She described numerous instances of physical and sexual violence by Combs,

including being kicked, punched, and dragged. Comb's former assistant backs all of this up and his testimony to the court, telling the court that one notable incident occurred on a private jet in twenty fifteen where Cassie screamed for help. She screamed, isn't anybody seeing this during an assault? But no one intervened. Cassie testified that Combs forced her into these drug fueled sexual encounters with male sex workers, the freak offs as he called them, which Combs orchestrated and filmed.

the court. Cutty testified that in December of twenty eleven, Combs allegedly broke into his La home, and during that break in, he unwrapped Christmas gifts and locked Cutty's dog in a bathroom. A few weeks after this break in, Cutty's Porsche was destroyed by a Molotov cocktail explosion. He testified that he believes Combs was behind that attack. So after Cutty's car was fire bombed in January of twenty twelve, which he blamed Combs for, he was like, I have

to meet Comb's in person and figure this out. He said.

that we fell in love and things just happened. Cassie said that she broke up with Cuddy after Combs told her that quote he was going to hurt the both of us. I also want to include a little bit of testimony from a woman named Carrie Morgan, Cassie's former best friend. She said that Combs once choked her and hit her with a wooden coat hanger, trying to get

her to reveal who Cassie was allegedly cheating with. This incident led to Combs having to pay her thirty thousand dollars for her to keep quiet, and ultimately ended her almost twenty year friendship with Cassie. She testified that Cassie told her that she thought that she was milking it and over exaggerating. Her friend had basically had enough, She signed an NDA and her and Cassie never spoke again.

I wanted to include her testimony because she really is an outside person with no real connection to this situation anymore. So when people try to say this is all some kind of a conspiracy against Colmbs, why would someone who hasn't spoken up for years, is no longer connected to either party, and just as she puts it, wants to quote move on with her life, want to be involved in a conspiracy to take down Shawn Colmbs. I found the testimony of Cassie's mother, Regina, to be amongst the

most heartbreaking, other than the testimony from Cassie herself. Cassie's mom said that she was once forced to pay Comb's twenty thousand dollars. Essentially, she says that Combs was angry because Cassie was involved with Kid Cutty. He's threatened to release tapes of Cassie's involuntary participation with the male sex workers. Regina said that in twenty eleven, Combs threatened Cassie via email after learning that her and Kidcutty were dating. In

this email, which was read in the court, did. He threaten to release two different sex types of Cassie, including one that will be released on Christmas Day. He also threatened Cassie and Kid Cutty, saying that they would be physically harmed, although not by his hands. Cassie's mom said, quote, it was understood that he was going to need twenty thousand dollars to recoup money he had already spent on her because he was angry that she had had a

relationship with Kitcutti. He was angry that he had spent money on her and that she was with another person. Cassie's mom and her husband said they had to take out a home equity loan to fulfill the payment that Combs allegedly demanded because it was really the only way they can get the money. Cassie's mom also photographed all of Cassie's injuries from Diddy, which were pretty significant. So that's where things are at with this testimony as of

recording this on May twenty third. All of those claims were made in court under oath. Those are just the facts of the situation. But like most things these days, this is not only playing out in court, it's also playing out online. So I want to pipot to talk about how this conversation has been going down on the internet. So I have seen so many well worn tropes about what is happening play out online. The first is the obvious, the gold digger trope. This trope has already made a

few appearances at the trial. Combs's lawyer said in his opening statement, So when you hear from the witnesses who testify here, who will tell you they were victimized, asked yourself, what is their motive?

abuse are interspersed with moments of affection. Cassie basically says as much during the trial, she testified that at the time when all of the stuff was going down, she still had a lot of complicated love for Combs because they had been in a relationship for over a decade, and obviously that emotional rollercoaster of highs and lows can

create really confusing emotional ties. Add with that, the fear of physical violence, which we saw and is not in dispute or other forms of retribution, can keep victims of abuse trapped in relationships, which the testimony from Cassie and others certainly suggest was a big factor here.

made voluntary adult choices. They actually had Cassie read text messagers that she had written to Combs in court where she said things that maybe could be construed like she was into what was going on, but Cassie says at that point she was really just trying to placate him and that it was really just words that she was typing.

She describes how she would have these big events or premieres coming up, and that she was just doing these things and pretending to go along with them just to try to keep him under control so that he wouldn't ruin and blow up more aspects of her life. And truly, can there really be any consent in a situation where both parties agree there is control, abuse and coercion. Okay, So another trope I've seen a lot online is that the people who are speaking out are rats. They're going

against somebody just because they're rats. The rapper Young Thug essentially called Kid Cutty a snitch for testifying at all. But let's be real, Combs broke into his house and blew up his car and Kid Cutty stayed silent about it for ten years until he was subpoened by the Feds to testify. So this is not someone who was just like out looking to thing like a canary against somebody who's wrong them.

down a black man. And this one is the trope that I would say bothers me the most, because I think that there is a certain subsect of people for whom a powerful, visible black man will never be able to do anything wrong and should always be shielded from accountability, even if we have video evidence of him doing something wrong.

And I think we see some version of this that comes out anytime a famous or visible black man is accused of a crime, Like we're all supposed to just stay silent and protect an abuser because he is a black man who is doing good in the community or you know, trying to help his people, or whatever you

want to say. And it just makes me wonder, like, why is it that this black man is more worthy of protection, but the black woman he abused isn't, And that the whole dynamic is that she's meant to stay silent so that he can continue to masquerade as a black man worth protecting.

other respected institutions. He did this with intention to shield himself from accountability for his vast crimes, and this is a tried and true abuser tactic. Ditty was known for his iconic White Party, which was a who's who of a lists celebrities and moguls. He donated to all the right causes, you know, he donated a million dollars to his alma mater and my old workplace, Howard University, right here in DC. Basically trying to keep anybody from calling him out, because look at.

and working to uplift the black community. This is kind of a side note, but y'all might remember that Ditty's public persona kind of shifted in twenty seventeen when he started asking people to call him.

a crazy brain. He talks about how he continue to try to understand life beyond the conventional earthly plane, saying I'm a big old hippie, said Combs, who has attended multiple Burning Man festivals. I had a little bit of ego left in me, and when I did Toad, I officially had an ego death. Toad is the drug DMT, and it's honestly giving that joke. Men need to do psychedelics to have the same psychological revelation that most girls have had since they were fourteen. So basically it's I

have done all these great things. I am now a loving and centered family man. I could not also be a criminal. It's what Harvey Weinstein did, It's what Bill Cosby did, It's what r Kelly did, and now it is what Diddy is doing. So this is what I hate. How there are real people who were hurt in this case, but of course, in our current digital media climate, it just becomes another way to callously score political points in

the ever running culture war. So the reality is is that Diddy, in building his public persona to protect him from accountability, is cozy with lots of famous people, Democrats, Republicans of their celebrities. When you look through the different pictures of who has been photographed with Ditty over the years, it's basically everyone. None of this should be surprising because it's of course intentional. You might recall that he had

a voting initiative called Vote or Die. He endorsed both Obama and Biden, which of course Fox News made a huge production about while glossing over his documented connections to Trump. This actually became a thing during the twenty twenty four election, when right before the election, the account Trump fact News posted a picture of Harris and Didty, saying, never forget

how Harris got her start. She's no stranger to Diddy parties in Los Angeles either, So this is obviously a reference to the common lie hurled at Harris that she quote slept her way.

Sean Combs's head on William's body. It's like obviously a very bad photoshop if you look at it for more than five seconds, but it prompted the comment the Ditty client list goes all the way to the top, posted by red Pill USA, a major pro Trump conspiracy account, and it was viewed over a million times on truth Social Trump himself reposted and then deleted an image of Harris with Ditty's face photoshopped over Montell Williams's with the

caption Kamala doing the diddy Madam Vice President, have you ever been involved or engaged in one of puff Daddy's freak offs? He did delete that, thankfully, But this was just the beginning of all the disinformation and being spread about this case.

lot of times that's true. But I wanted to talk about this one involving Prince, because this particular conspiracy theory was not just staying in one niche corner of the Internet. I've seen this particular false claim about Prince all over the web, to the point where mainstream news outlets like Yahoo had to publish pieces debunking it because they were getting so much traction, and I think it reveals a lot about why this kind of AI generated conspiracy theory

content works. They blow up something that has a grain of actual truth to it, or something that fits an existing pattern or story that we already know or already align with, and then project this entire fictional world onto it. So in nineteen ninety three, Prince famously changed his name from Prince to the artist formerly known as Prince in a public dispute over how much control his record label,

Warner Brothers had over his music. So the grain of truth is that Prince was somebody who went up against powerful figures in the entertainment industry. So this particular false claim really does align with my existing worldview about Prince, which is why it works so well. And Prince died really suddenly, so of course there will always be conspiracy surrounding his death, like maybe he was killed by those very same powerful forces that he was trying to call

out and dismantle. So then when you hear about the ways that Diddy, who actually is a powerful force at entertainment, used his power to abuse and control others, it makes sense why this is the AI conspiracy that really hits and takes off and gets traction because at its core it has a grain of truth to it, and it aligns with the kind of conspiracy that our brains love, you know, a story about a beloved figure being taken out by a powerful evil force he was trying to

take down. In fact, I have to admit that when I was watching some of these Prince Diddy conspiracy videos for this episode, I found myself going from watching it critically to at a certain point catching myself almost kind of getting lost in the story because the story is that good, Like I could see myself sharing this video and if I wasn't already tuned into accurate coverage of the trial, I m not even believe this actually happened in the courtroom, even though it didn't, because it aligned

so well with my pre existing worldview. And honestly, that's what AI and LM's are so good at reflecting our own world's back at us, and it seems like that's why they were really able to hit a home run with this Prince Diddy AI conspiracy theories. So where did this Diddy Prince video come from? Well, it came from a YouTube channel called what is My Star Wars, which posted the video titled Prince's Secret Recording Just Shattered Ditty's Trial.

public figure in some sort of sad situation. It's generally an AI generated image of a sad looking celebrity, and then.

appeared in the courtroom to give explosive testimony. But like I said, it's just fan fiction, except in my opinion, they're obviously going out of their way to make it look real. And it's interesting how they pick celebrities that have some level of conspiracy theory kind of around them already, folks like Will Smith or Oprah. They pair that with an AI generated image of that celebrity looking distraught on the stand next to an AI generated Diddy, and.

It says, the shocking testimony has sent shockwaves across the entertainment industry and social media as the Harvey family's reputation is suddenly thrown into question. Now there is a disclaim worth at the very bottom that says this content is fictional and intended for entertainment purposes only. No verified court documents or official statements confirmed these claims, but that doesn't stop people in the comment tents from talking about it like it's real.

This could be a movie, and I hate to break it to you, but you can't see mister Jackson's testimony because it doesn't exist. It never happened. So even when the coverage of the trial isn't straight up making up facts, it still feels gross. People online are covering this trial.

At the recapping and Netflix series Friend of the podcast, Francesca Ramsey made a great point that creators online are rushing to do these breakdowns and coverage for engagement of all these salacious details that make it seem with our covering a fictional series, not the traumas of somebody else's life.

It's a bit of a sad commentary on the state of our digital media ecosystem, which really does encourage everybody to have an opinion, everybody to have a take, but in doing so treats real people's lives like stories and discourages empathy. And this kind of the fan fiction capturing the nation's interest with this trial is not new. It started the day that Ditty was arrested. Combs's late ex wife, the model kim Porter, died very suddenly in twenty eighteen.

Her listed cause of death was pneumonia, but rumors have swirled about her death since she died. After Ditty was arrested, An LA based producer self published a quote mamoir of kim Porter's on Amazon.

celebrities and sexual situations. He said that he received portions of the drive from a quote celebrity source who was quote very close inside the Kim and Ditty hip hop circle. In the Variety interview, Todd said, I'm not doing this for the money. I'm the voice for the voiceless, although he did acknowledge making a fair bit of money from the fake book. He even told Rolling Stone that he himself can't be sure if that memoir is real, saying, if somebody put my feet to the fire and they

said life or death, is this book realed? I have to say, I don't know.

And that really says a lot to me that we have a digital culture that really incentivizes just making stuff up about something as serious as sex trafficking and sexual abuse to make a quick book, whether through sales of bogus memoirs or through online engagement through AI generated fan fiction that has no grounding in reality. So what's next for Ditty? While the trial continues, and according to Rolling Stone, Combs's team is already working on a pardon from Trump

if he's convicted. Several longtime friends and allies of Combs have already begun making connections to the Trump team with hopes of laying the groundwork for a possible presidential pardon if Combs is found guilty on the charges her Rolling Stone, Combs's team is hoping to appeal to Trump by drawing a comparison between their shared stories two successful businessmen allegedly targeted by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New

York with baseless wink wink accusations of sexual assault. Combs and Trump have reportedly maintained a friendly personal relationship for over a decade.

Hello at tengodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengo doi dot com.