What exactly is driving the conspiracy theories about Sean 'Diddy' Combs?
The cases against Diddy aren't going away. Neither are the conspiracy theories.
Since Sean "Diddy" Combs' indictment and arrest in September, more than two dozen civil lawsuits have been filed against the media mogul for sexual assault, rape, sex trafficking and more. Many of the complaints, as well as the federal charges, depict a pattern in which Combs allegedly exploited his stature across music, fashion and entertainment to victimize those who looked up to him — including minors. The federal charges against the mogul not only accuse him of misconduct, but also of using his employees, record label and many business outfits to organize and facilitate his crimes for years.
As these allegations have played out in court proceedings and legal documents, a web of rumors and speculation has also developed online. It has been bolstered by social media platforms and algorithms, and at times threatens to shroud the facts of the civil and criminal cases against Combs.
Combs has repeatedly denied, via his attorneys, that he has ever trafficked, drugged or sexually assaulted anyone. And in one filing, his representation wrote that "by treating these ridiculous claims as anything but a pathetic extortion scheme, the government is fueling the fire of online conspiracy theories and making it impossible for Mr. Combs to have a fair trial." But the deluge of accusations against him, a surveillance video that shows him kicking his ex-girlfriend, the singer Cassie Ventura, in a Los Angeles hotel and new claims of Combs' aggressive behavior in the past have led many to wonder how such abuses of power went unchecked for so long — and who else might be complicit in cultivating a culture of silence around the alleged crimes.
On social media, content creators and internet sleuths have attempted to piece together a narrative of violence and exploitation that often values hearsay and conspiracy over reported information, all while framing themselves as the keepers of a truth that traditional media refuses to report on.
"It's something that's big, complicated, dark, scary and therefore hard for people to wrap their heads around," says Jack Brewster, enterprise editor at the misinformation tracking site NewsGuard. "And so when they do, they fill the dots with conspiracy theories."
Attempts to link other high-profile celebrities to the allegations against Combs are among the theories that have gained the most attention. One week after Combs was arrested in September, a memoir purportedly written by the late Kim Porter, a former partner of Combs, shot straight to the top of the Amazon bestsellers list — until her children with Combs issued a statement denouncing its legitimacy. In October, singer-songwriter Jaguar Wright appeared on Piers Morgan's Uncensored and made a number of inflammatory claims about Jay-Z and Beyoncé's ties to Combs. The Carters' lawyers got involved, leading Morgan to issue a public apology and edit the allegations against Bey and Jay out of the original interview.
On Dec. 8, a lawsuit accusing Combs and an unnamed male celebrity of raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000 was amended and refiled to name Shawn Carter, the rapper and mogul Jay-Z, as the second assailant. The lawsuit also states that an unnamed female celebrity watched the rape. Carter has denied the allegations, but speculation is already running rampant. Some are pointing to Beyoncé as the unnamed female celebrity and others are finding the Carters complicit in Combs' alleged crimes. On social media, a video first posted in March by YouTube psychic Sloan Bella has resurfaced and garnered hundreds of thousands of views; in the video, Bella claims that the Carters are "high-level government experiments" whose downfall she predicted. Other recirculated videos from Bella's account show similar claims about Combs — some online are now presenting these clips as evidence for more theories about Combs and the Carters.
These are just a few examples of how misinformation (false information spread regardless of intent), disinformation (deliberately misleading or manipulated information) and conspiracy theories (which can be a mix of the two) about Combs have gained significant traction in recent months.
In October, artist manager Courtney Burgess was subpoenaed to appear in front of a grand jury in the Southern District of New York. The same day he appeared in court, Burgess gave interviews to TMZ and NewsNation detailing his testimony; Burgess claimed he is in possession of 11 flash drives containing video Combs and other celebrities engaging in "freak offs" (coerced sexual performances) and Porter's "real memoir." The following week, Combs' legal team, headed up by Marc Agnifilo, requested a gag order that would prohibit victims and their lawyers from speaking publicly about the case. (The request was later denied.)
"It's been turned into clickbait of what claims get people's attention," says Sowmya Krishnamurthy, hip-hop journalist and author of Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion. "The growing theories are a witch hunt for other celebrities involved."
In the past, factual allegations and conspiratorial rumors have been conflated to create similar narratives about influential men who've been convicted of sexual misconduct, like Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and financier Jeffrey Epstein — but what is it about Combs that fuels the misinformation machine? In the current media ecosystem, what makes these stories distinct and dangerous?
Diddy's pervasive cultural power
A big part of it is Combs' influence and longevity across a number of industries. "There was a time when he was the biggest celebrity in the world," Krishnamurthy explains. "And that's also something we haven't really experienced … Outside of Hollywood, a lot of people didn't even know who [Harvey] Weinstein was."
Combs did more than simply rise up as a successful record executive, founding his label Bad Boy in 1992 and shepherding the careers of artists like The Notorious B.I.G. He created his own persona as a rapper and producer, becoming a platinum-selling, Grammy-winning artist in his own right; he branched into fashion with Sean John Clothing; he angled his eye for talent into media properties like MTV's Making the Band and, eventually, the creation of Revolt TV, and he led highly lucrative partnerships with brands like Cîroc Vodka and DeLeón Tequila. In other words, in the '90s and '00s, it seemed like everything Combs touched turned to gold — and that earned him not just cultural clout, but a significant air of admiration, particularly in the Black community.
"In a lot of ways, Diddy and folks like him are like the realization of the American dream," says A.D. Carson, a professor of hip-hop at the University of Virginia. "They are avatars of what folks understand to be Back excellence or Black achievement." So there are complications that arise, Carson says, when that legacy is thrown into question — but it may come at the cost of the alleged victims.
Combs' infamous White Parties in the Hamptons and Miami, now a site of the alleged abuse and trafficking, were once a status symbol for those in the upper echelons of celebrity. It was at these invite-only parties where politicians would toast with the owners of sports teams, real estate moguls with reverends, big screen stars with video vixens, theater impresarios and up-and-coming rappers. The White Parties were known to be debaucherous yet innocuous — that was the appeal. In that vein, Krishnamurthy says, Combs' public image has always been fodder for tabloid gossip and the conspiracies that are born from that. "With Puff, he's always been mired in different types of controversy," she says. "I think now because of the internet, and social media specifically, you're seeing a lot of Gen Z and younger millennials learning about some of these things for the first time."
One such theory that has spread like wildfire on social media in light of the lawsuits is that Combs is gay. Krishnamurthy says the theory stems from homophobia in hip-hop and the decades-old rumor about "the gay rapper," a narrative former HOT 97 host Wendy Williams helped popularize in the '90s about a famous man in hip-hop whom she claimed was closeted. Earlier this year, Charlamagne tha God alleged that Williams believed Combs was gay, and as a result, Combs got her fired from her job at HOT 97. As more men come forward with allegations against Combs, Krishnamurthy says speculation about the mogul's sexuality has been made into a running joke online. Many internet theorists bring Combs' sexual identity into question as a jeer toward him and other male celebrities and say "No Diddy" (in lieu of "no homo") to distance themselves from the topic of queerness they're dissecting.
"That's become the headline. I have not heard anyone talking about victims. I have not heard about making the industry safer for women or for young people," says Krishnamurthy.
The internet and social media feedback loop
Krishnamurthy, Brewster and Carson all agree that part of the problem is that many people today rely on social media to get their news; and clicks, views and virality are treated interchangeably with vetted and verified information. Earlier this year, a song purportedly by Justin Bieber where he sings "I lost myself at a Diddy party" garnered millions of views across TikTok, X and YouTube — several news outlets later reported the song was most likely generated by artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, the song sparked a wave of resurfaced clips of Combs and Bieber's interactions over the years on social media, leading users to scrutinize and speculate about the relationship between the two artists and project a narrative of victimhood upon Bieber, who was at one point seen as Combs' mentee and has not publicly addressed the allegations or conspiracies.
Brewster says that if people search "Diddy" on TikTok, there's a high likelihood they'll see a video that feeds into these theories. In 2022, NewsGuard published a report that found almost 20% of all search engine results on TikTok contained some kind of misinformation, which posed harm particularly to young users, who are more likely to rely on the platform's search function to learn about current events. In a statement to NPR, a TikTok spokesperson said that, per its community guidelines, which are enforced through a combination of technology and human moderation, the platform is committed to removing "misinformation that causes significant harm to individuals, our community, or the larger public regardless of intent" and that between April and June of 2024, the platform removed 97% of videos "that were categorized as 'misinformation' proactively," 77% of the time before anyone saw the material.
But Brewster, who led the TikTok report at NewsGuard, says many of the same problems still persist, and other platforms face similar issues. "With YouTube specifically, the way the algorithm is based upon your thumbnail, your title, the level of how sticky the SEO is — that's going to make sure that you get pushed up in the algorithm," says Krishnamurthy, who has her own YouTube channel. "So you have to wonder, for a content creator, are you being incentivized to perhaps be more dramatic or more salacious than is necessary?"
On YouTube, known provocateurs like Perez Hilton rack up tens of thousands of views by using titles like "The most horrifying Diddy lawsuit so far!" for videos discussing the case. Meanwhile, a 15-year-old video posted on Justin Bieber's official YouTube channel that chronicles 48 hours spent alongside Combs has resurfaced to the top results for the search "Diddy" on YouTube, with dozens of comments wondering why the video is being recommended in users' algorithms and homepages decades after its release.
YouTube's community guidelines state that "certain types of misleading or deceptive content with serious risk of egregious harm" are not allowed on the platform, and videos containing such content may be eliminated; after several infractions within 90 days, a channel may be terminated. But in 2022, more than 80 fact-checkers from around the world published an open letter to YouTube's former CEO, Susan Wojcicki, expressing concern that the platform was one of the world's leading conduits of mis- and disinformation and that not enough measures were being taken to curb the spread.
In a statement to NPR, a YouTube spokesperson said that "YouTube's Community Guidelines apply to everyone and all forms of content. As we do for many major news stories, our systems are working to connect viewers to content related to the allegations from authoritative news outlets in search results and recommendations."
But Krishnamurthy and Brewster both raise concerns about what consequences, if any, arise from implicitly or explicitly pushing false narratives online — especially once the claims have already been viewed and shared widely.
Media Literacy
With the information pipeline more congested than ever, reporters, analysts and content creators (who often may consider themselves all three) are all competing for the same attention in the same spaces online. Some say the dissolving delineations in media make it harder for the consumer to decipher fact from fiction.
Brewster doesn't believe media literacy is on the decline — "people have gotten more skeptical," he says. Instead, he places the onus on the networks that hold, harvest and promote the information, specifically TikTok, that pushes misinformation to the top.
"If 20 years ago, someone told you that every single newsstand was going to have anonymous newspapers and magazines and you wouldn't know anything about them when you were going to buy them, you would say, 'What the hell are you talking about?' But that's the world that we occupy now on X, on TikTok, on Instagram," he says. "We don't know really any information about the sources where we're getting our news, because all we have is what people offer."
Krishnamurthy weathered the evolution of print media into digital spaces and recently started migrating her own cultural criticism to YouTube six months ago. She agrees that the platforms are the source of confusion, but draws a more bleak conclusion from her experience of uploading daily: "I think, unfortunately, the public's level of media literacy is pretty much zero," she concedes. What's even more ironic is that in the flood of this low literacy feedback loop, the well for the most credentialed voices in the space have run dry.
Hemorrhaging of hip-hop media
Getty Images of Combs' White Parties are pieced together by seemingly "verified" accounts to implicate any celebrity in his early 2000s orbit as taking part in the "freak offs" that are now under federal investigation. But with hip-hop media becoming a shell of what it once was, there are fewer cultural checks and balances against these allegations making their way into the broader conversation about hip-hop industry power dynamics.
In the last 20 years of Combs' cultural ascent — conquering fashion, film, wine & spirits, even Broadway — there's been a parallel divestment from dedicated hip-hop media. Magazines specifically on the hip-hop beat — like The Source, XXL, Rap Pages and VIBE — either shuttered or lost their dominance and bandwidth for enterprise reporting. Shows like Rap City and 106 & Park have sunset, blogs like 2DopeBoyz or NahRight folded into broader music outlets under the general umbrella of "pop culture" and broadcast radio shows have broadened their genre scope. As the music and culture of hip-hop have grown in popularity, publications that haven't historically covered it have started to notice and cash in. (You could even argue the rise of Combs' celebrity in industries outside of hip-hop contributed to this shift.) Krishnamurthy points out that there are fewer journalists covering these cases who possess both the reporting chops and the cultural expertise. This contributes to misinformation and disinformation going unchecked before becoming viral, with virtually no consequences.
"It truly is a perfect storm between the rise of conspiracy theories and the downfall of an institution," she says. "What ended up happening in hip-hop media was very similar to anything that came under print media or traditional media, that in the past several years has eroded with the rise of technology, social media, the influencer very much becoming an exalted voice as someone who was an authority. But what we end up having now is, I would argue, one of the biggest stories in hip-hop of all time is being reported by people outside of hip-hop. And they don't have the back story. They don't have the nuance."
As a result, commentators lacking the nuance and necessary context jump to the most salacious, and sometimes dangerous, conclusions. "Every celebrity, anyone who was someone, has a picture with Diddy at some point," Krishnamurthy says. "I think because so many new fans and young fans are just learning about Diddy and who he is and his career, they're Googling him and seeing all these celebrities and photos and they're immediately drawing a line between, 'Okay, this person is in a photo with him, so they must also be a co-conspirator.' Maybe they're a victim! … It's so irresponsible to sort of pull other people into it. They've not been named. They've not been formally charged. And we don't know what that story is."
Click-baity bot accounts are just the start: The peddling of the disavowed Kim Porter memoir and Jaguar Wright's personal claims on Piers Morgan's Uncensored are two examples of mis- and disinformation being promoted in spaces that reach a lot farther than niche, conspiracy theory corners of the internet. Professor Carson points out that the motives of those who make such claims and ingratiate themselves with this ongoing story without care for the cultural implications need to be interrogated, too.
Some conspiracy theories, Carson says, are more widely accepted in the Black community because "the histories that Black people have endured in this country makes outright dismissal of conspiracy seem like an incredibly impractical thing to do." And because this skepticism of systems of power is inherited, Carson doesn't lay sole responsibility on those creating the theories. "I don't know if the smoke that I have would be as much for Jaguar Wright than it would be for the people who don't know how to vet the information or don't know how to contextualize what she has to offer to that conversation."
The more people without the proper cultural credentials who, even unknowingly, jump on the sensational Combs-conspiracy bandwagon, the more vivid the racial undertones of some of the theories become.
Scapegoating of hip-hop as a whole
Beyond this general lack of discernment and the attrition of proper cultural reporters, there's a more concealed reason that the theories around these cases are outsized compared to other powerful men: the perceived criminality of a self-made, Black, hip-hop mogul.
As a multi-hyphenate mogul, Combs was able to garner influence in every industry he entered over time. In the wake of the murders of The Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac, during one of hip-hop's darkest valleys, Combs was able to usher a new era of opulence, prestige and partying into the culture, parlaying that fun into financial and political power. In the spirit of a classic Biggie bar from "Juicy," Combs was able to take hip-hop farther than many ever imagined, lifting up a Black art form to a new pinnacle. Those who've been watching how the conspiracy theories move say certain narratives are doused with racist rationale that ignites negative stereotypes about hip-hop in full.
"There's this age-old engagement with scapegoating hip-hop. That is the projection of pathology on hip-hop culture," Carson says, citing decades of negative representation and fearmongering done by mass media.
For Krishnamurthy, the apparent bias comes through when analysts who lack cultural awareness speak on these cases, even peddling misinformation from media archives that have historically vilified the music: "If you listen to, let's say, an outsider or someone with a very cursory knowledge, it's very easy to sort of paint hip-hop with a very negative brush because all they know is what they heard or what they read online."
The way professor Arionne Nettles, who teaches digital journalism at Florida A&M University, sees it, this pathology goes even deeper than hip-hop and can be twofold in its deployment: "First, there is the true fact that historically, we do know that there have been times where Black men had been unfairly accused of things and that the stereotype of the Black man, especially, from slavery and after, has been kind of an oversexualized brute." Nettles says she's also seen this stereotype wielded by some theorists in defense of Combs, used to prevent accountability on behalf of real harm or violence that has happened to victims at the hands of a powerful Black man.
To date, there are more than 20 civil case filings against Combs alleging sexual assault, rape and coercion. That's in addition to the federal charges. Heading into jury selection for Combs' May 2025 trial, Nettles thinks it's going to be hard to find impartial New Yorkers who haven't seen or heard any piece of misinformation surrounding the cases. "Juries are made of people and people are going to have opinions and it can cloud what people see as the facts and what they might have come in baking," Nettles explains. "And it's really almost impossible at this point to avoid it."
As the 2025 trial approaches, these theories, and the corresponding social media tactics, have already made it into official court proceedings. During court hearings in November, to determine whether he would be granted pretrial bail, the prosecution accused Combs of "relentlessly" trying to contact victims in their case by using other inmates' phone privileges to make calls to people who are not on his approved contact list. Prosecutors also accused the 55-year-old of making plans, via this unauthorized communication, to launch an orchestrated social media campaign to sway public opinion in his favor, a plan that could have painted him as a family man and included his sons sharing a birthday message on social media.
Combs' leading defense attorney, Marc Agnifilo, rebuked the claims that his client is plotting any campaign. And as for the mounting civil cases being filed against the mogul as he awaits trial? In a statement to NPR, Combs' legal team called the credibility of Tony Buzbee, the attorney for many of the 2024 civil suits filed after Combs' criminal arrest, into question. "The lawyer behind this lawsuit is interested in media attention rather than the truth, as is obvious from his constant press appearances and 1-800 number," Combs' lawyers declared. "As we've said before, Mr. Combs cannot respond to every new publicity stunt, even in response to claims that are facially ridiculous or demonstrably false."
In rapid response to being named a co-defendant in a 2000 rape allegation, Jay-Z accused Buzbee of being an "ambulance chaser in a cheap suit" whose only motivation in representing these civil suits is to exploit Black celebrities in a moment that criminalizes the entire culture. "This lawyer, who I have done a bit of research on, seems to have a pattern of these types of theatrics," Carter's public statement read, concluding, "Only your network of conspiracy theorists, fake psychics will believe the idiotic claims you have levied against me that, if not for the seriousness surrounding harm to kids, would be laughable."
In a statement emailed to NPR, Carter denied the allegations made against him in the December filing and stated that he was the target of a blackmail attempt designed to extort settlement money. Though the rapper and Roc Nation exec is not named in a November filing against Buzbee, there is a John Doe celebrity in the process of suing The Buzbee Law Firm for extortion. "Defendants have threatened to unleash entirely fabricated and malicious allegations of sexual assault—including multiple instances of rape of a minor, both male and female—against plaintiff if he refuses to comply with their demands," the complaint reads. NPR reached out to the Buzbee firm for comment and is awaiting to hear back.
Ultimately, the whirlwind of mis- and disinformation has distracted from the very real allegations at hand, entered as fact in the courts by real people who are claiming real, long-term harm. Within the lawsuits filed against Combs by alleged victims, feelings of shame and deep-seated trauma that resulted from the assaults and the fear associated with ever coming forward are a common thread. There's a pattern among the conspiracy theories that are circulating most rapidly online, too: They obfuscate and dehumanize the plaintiffs completely.
"This is still an industry where people don't talk. And if you want to work in this industry, if you want to be successful, there are certain just sorts of things that people accept," Krishnamurthy says. "And if we want that to change, we have to create a safe space for people to come forward, for people to share their story … If the Sean 'Diddy' Combs case truly is supposed to be a watershed moment for hip-hop's, let's say, #MeToo reckoning, we're not going to get to that place if the level of dialogue stays within this sort of finger-pointing and trying to out people."
