Trial of 2016 Twitter Troll to Test Limits of Online Speech
fliptop writes:
The goal, federal prosecutors said, was to suppress votes for Ms. Clinton by persuading her supporters to falsely believe they could cast presidential ballots by text message:
The misinformation campaign was carried out by a group of conspirators, prosecutors said, including a man in his 20s who called himself Ricky Vaughn. On Monday he will go on trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn under his real name, Douglass Mackey, after being charged with conspiring to spread misinformation designed to deprive others of their right to vote.
"The defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one of the most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution," Nicholas L. McQuaid, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Criminal Division, said in 2021 when charges against Mr. Mackey were announced.
Prosecutors have said that Mr. Mackey, who went to Middlebury College in Vermont and said he lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, used hashtags and memes as part of his deception and outlined his strategies publicly on Twitter and with co-conspirators in private Twitter group chats.
[...] Mr. Mackey's trial is expected to provide a window into a small part of what the authorities have described as broad efforts to sway the 2016 election through lies and disinformation. While some of those attempts were orchestrated by Russian security services, others were said to have emanated from American internet trolls.
Just a few days ago the trial was delayed after a witness was allegedly intimidated into withdrawing his testimony.
Related:
- The Strong Case That Twitter Censorship Violates California's Civil Rights Laws
- Twitter Fights Trolls, Invites Trolls, and Trolls U.S.
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