Justin Baldoni ist von WME zurückgetreten, nachdem Blake Lively eine Beschwerde eingereicht hat, in der er ihn der sexuellen Belästigung beschuldigt

Many people will brush off this whole story as just some entertainment industry nonsense.

That would be a mistake, because it actually provides hard evidence of corporations manipulating all of us on all social media platforms, including Reddit.

From [the NY Times article about this story](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html):

> There are references in emails to “social manipulation” and “proactive fan posting,” and text messages cite efforts to “boost” and “amplify” online content that was favorable to Mr. Baldoni or critical of Ms. Lively.

> “We are crushing it on Reddit,”

To be clear, lots of us already know how widespread astroturfing is, but I’m talking about less technicially proficient people who aren’t chronically online, if they can be educated about this kind of shit, *maybe* we can save ourselves.

Two things can be true (both Baldoni and Blake prob did things), but what I am most curious about is that other people were around while Justin was doing things like showing naked pictures.

Crew like makeup and hair artists who witnessed this type of behavior. So that makes me go hmmm… plus all the text messages.

Reddit ate this shit up.

We live in a world where accusations are enough. However, there are three sides to a story – his, hers, and the truth.

This helps no one’s career, as they all sound toxic.

I never heard about this dude until today but well, fuck him and his pr team.

I feel so justified now, when everyone was hating on Blake Lively when before that weird interview clip was pulled up everyone was just on her for “not being serious enough” about the subject matter of the movie doing press I thought there was something sus about the whole thing and this guy seemed kinda scummy.

Hope this teaches the internet how easy it is to bait social media into hating someone but let’s be real, it won’t.

This is a dude that had to do a whole tedx talk about how men can be masculine and emotional too, felt like some incredibly dumb posturing at the time, like Jeffrey Lebowski going ‘strong men also cry’ but irl

She certainly did not deserve this treatment but I bet it wasn’t hard for Baldoni’s people to make her look bad. She’s not a great person but that’s neither here not there, no one deserves that level of harassment.

Blake is Taylor’s friend. Taylor will end you. Rip justin. Even if you are innocent you are cooked.