Cardi B’s Plea to Elon Musk
The rapper is facing a legal challenge involving her tattoo.
The Grammy Award winner is resolving a long-running case stemming from a brawl in 2022 that found her to blame for ordering her crew to beat up bartenders at Angels Strip Club in Queens, New York. Cardi B—real name Belcalis Marlenis Almanzar Cephus—told her fans on Twitter that she’d be doing community service in the coming weeks. She says the experience has been “the best thing that happened to me” and encourages her followers to get involved.
It’s unclear how many hours she’ll be doing her work, but she hopes to raise awareness about gang violence and sexual assault in the area. “I’m a native of this city, and I want to make sure that people understand the issues occurring here in my neighborhood,” she writes. “It’s not only about the violence, it’s about the rapes, it’s about the child molesters, it’s about the drugs that are being sold on our streets and the mental illness that’s being neglected.”
She also wants to teach her followers to protect their personal information online. “If you have a smartphone and know how to use it and protect your privacy, then I’m happy for you. If you don’t, then I think you should learn how to,” she adds.
In the past, when a user on traditional bulletin boards would be shadowbanned, it was a clear-cut proposition: Their posts were either seen or not. But with modern social platforms that rely on algorithmic feeds, it’s more complicated. The opacity of moderation systems can fuel conspiracy theories that a platform deliberately tries to silence certain points of view.
