Social Media Manipulation Tactics Emerge in Blake Lively Lawsuit

A sophisticated social media manipulation campaign targeting actress Blake Lively has come to light amid her ongoing legal battle with actor and director Justin Baldoni, revealing a disturbing pattern of digital tactics used to shape public opinion.

Court documents from Lively’s lawsuit against Baldoni show evidence of an orchestrated effort to sway online sentiment against the actress after she filed workplace sexual harassment and retaliation claims against her “It Ends With Us” co-star and director in January.

The saga bears striking similarities to the social media frenzy that surrounded Amber Heard during her 2022 defamation trial with Johnny Depp. Not coincidentally, Melissa Nathan, Baldoni’s crisis publicist who is also named in Lively’s lawsuit, previously worked for Depp during his high-profile court battle.

According to court filings, Baldoni and his business partners allegedly paid between $75,000 and $175,000 for what was described in text messages as a “social manipulation” campaign. This operation reportedly included astroturfing—the practice of creating multiple inauthentic accounts to mimic grassroots movements—and artificially boosting anti-Lively content while suppressing negative information about Baldoni.

The strategy appears to have been remarkably effective. Since August 2024, shortly after text messages between Baldoni’s publicists discussed these tactics, social media platforms have been flooded with anti-Lively sentiment. The same pattern intensified in January after Lively went public with her allegations and Baldoni filed a countersuit for defamation.

“We are crushing it on Reddit,” wrote Jed Wallace, described in court documents as a “fixer” hired by Baldoni’s team, in a text message sent on the premiere day of “It Ends With Us” in August.

Reddit, one of the internet’s most influential discussion platforms, appears to have been a primary battleground in this information war. Investigation shows that comments containing links to articles about Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman’s past legal issues, or information about Wallace himself, were systematically downvoted—pushing them below visibility thresholds where most users would see them.

“It was actually making us second-guess ourselves, because that’s what that kind of thing does. It makes you think you’re wrong,” said one Reddit moderator who helps oversee a pro-Lively community on the platform. Moderators reported unusual patterns of downvoting happening within minutes, with posts that had gained positive traction suddenly plunging into negative territory.

The alleged manipulation extends beyond simple downvoting. Moderators described receiving false harassment reports against legitimate posts and even direct messages pressuring them to remove content related to Wallace. Reddit eventually intervened in one instance, issuing a warning to a pro-Baldoni subreddit for “community interference” against site rules.

“We are constantly monitoring and iterating on our spam and threat detection process to ensure authentic engagement and voting,” a Reddit spokesperson stated, though they claimed the platform “found no signs of scaled manipulation” specifically related to the Lively-Baldoni case.

Mark Carman, a University of South Australia PhD candidate who researches Reddit manipulation, explained how easily the platform’s voting system can be exploited. “My view of systems like Reddit is that yes, it’s easy to manipulate,” Carman said. His research found that just ten inauthentic votes applied shortly after a post is published can dramatically affect its visibility and performance.

While Nathan’s text messages described Wallace’s services as “most importantly untraceable,” the legal battle has brought these alleged activities into the spotlight. Wallace has since sued Lively separately for defamation, while maintaining a lower public profile than Freedman, who has taken a more aggressive stance against Lively in media appearances.

The case highlights the growing influence of social media manipulation in shaping public discourse. With Reddit’s user base more than doubling since 2018 and its content increasingly used as a trusted source of information by internet users, the platform’s vulnerability to such tactics raises serious concerns.

As one Reddit moderator put it: “We should all be smarter about manipulation of the Reddit algorithm, but of course, no one will learn.”

The legal proceedings between Lively and Baldoni continue to unfold, with the full extent of the alleged social media manipulation campaign still being investigated. What remains clear is that the digital battlefield has become increasingly sophisticated, with tactics that were once the domain of political campaigns now being deployed in entertainment industry disputes.

AI tools, upvote services, and coordinated campaigns aren’t just shaping our political discourse—they’re now determining whose story we believe in Hollywood.