from the French-troller-not-Old-Norse-troll dept.
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.
Related Stories
Twitter has announced a series of new anti-abuse measures, following the leak of the CEO's admission that Twitter "sucks at dealing with abuse and trolls." It has extended its definition of violent threats to include "promoting violence against others." Punitive measures include temporary account suspensions, obligations to delete certain tweets, and requiring phone verification to reenable account access. The company is also devoting more resources to reviewing abuse complaints, and is experimenting with a feature that would automatically identify potentially abusive tweets by looking for similarities with past abuse.
In a potentially troll-enabling move, Twitter has added an option to allow users to receive direct (private) messages from users they don't follow. The feature is opt-in and could allow additional public engagement with businesses and journalists.
Finally, Twitter has shifted management of all non-U.S. user accounts to Twitter International, headquartered in Ireland. That means those users will be subject to stricter European Union data protection laws. Twitter's latest transparency report indicates that the U.S. government made 1,622 requests for information involving 3,299 accounts from July 1, 2014 through December 31. Twitter complied with 80% of the requests.
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
The social media giant may be guilty of violating of California law regarding discriminating against a political class, and being deceptive to their customer base. Twitter, by discriminating against people on the right, has exposed itself to a potential cascade of legal liability—including a potential class action suit.
Despite being from dangerous.com, this is not an attempted troll. The author gives a quite interesting analysis of Twitter's potential legal issues in censoring political speech in California.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2023, @09:22PM (1 child)
This seems fairly cut and dry to me. I don't think a disinformation campaign that is plainly malicious can hide behind 1A. You can't say, "ha-ha, just kidding after the fact". If it were a joke, it should have been readily apparent to the extent where they wouldn't have gone so far as to indict. I can still see them getting away with this--speech is serious in the USA, but has limits and if they can prove fraudulent intent I don't see a guilty verdict threatening my rights. If you don't believe me, just wear pink underwear on election day in 2024 and your vote to re-elect Biden will be counted automatically.
(Score: 2) by SecurityGuy on Wednesday March 22 2023, @04:11PM
Agreed, this is a laughably stupid defense. Many crimes involve speaking, and the first amendment provides no defense. "Your honor, maybe I did rob that bank, but I had a First Amendment right to claim I had a weapon and say 'Give me all your money!'" Good luck with that.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 21 2023, @09:59PM (22 children)
If the "voters" were dumb enough to believe that story, then they were too dumb to vote anyway. Some dude talking shit on the internet? I don't see a serious problem here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2023, @10:06PM (2 children)
The followers are the dangerous ones, not the leaders. People who believe the lie are worse than those who tell the lie
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday March 21 2023, @11:00PM (1 child)
Indeed, if it had just been Hitler, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened. If it was even just his cronies, it still wouldn't have gone anywhere.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday March 22 2023, @02:20PM
Hitler's Germany was a prime example of the phrase:
"First they came for the X people, then they came for the Y people, then there was no one left to help you when they came for you."
Still, it was very much a genocide and horrific. Just, Hitler was also against anyone that didn't fit the ideal "Aryan" physique. Which means, if you were disabled for whatever reason, you were also on the chopping block. Along with a whole slew of "non-Aryans". Not just the Jews.
Part of the ideal "Aryan" soldier was their ideas of turning their soldiers into "super soldiers". Which lead to them giving their soldiers all kinds of drugs to "enhance" their abilities. But, that's it's own twisted rabbit hole.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Touché) by Tork on Tuesday March 21 2023, @10:37PM (12 children)
Heh. So you think the "stop the steal" folks are too dumb to vote. Fair enough.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Tuesday March 21 2023, @11:24PM (7 children)
And unfortunately, there isn't a good way of dealing with that. So often knowledge and education requirements just become a tool to tilt the elections in favor of the ruling party.
The best you can hope for is that a free press can education enough people that the ignorant don't have much impact on the results.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 22 2023, @02:37AM (6 children)
Fact: Mainstream media did everything possible to squelch the Hunter Biden story. Mainstream media perpetuated the hoax about Trum/Russia collusion, while squelching the Biden/Ukraine scandals. Mainstream media did everything it could to paint Julian Assange as a rapist, even though his accusers specifically stated multiple times that he did not rape them.
I'd sure love to see a free press. You know, the kind of press where an individual owns a paper, a company owns another paper, a nonprofit runs another paper, maybe the university owns another paper, and all of them are free to publish their editorials etc. We'll never see that sort of thing again. Today, it's virtually all mega-corporations, primarily owned by billionaires, and the little guy has no voice. Just like Twitter was until Musk took over. In such a world, it simply doesn't matter that some paper owned by an individual in Poughkeepsie publishes nothing but bullshit lies. The competition on the other side of town is going to publish another version of his own lies, and everyone gets to evaluate all the flavors of bullshit for themselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 22 2023, @12:35PM (4 children)
OK, riddle me this: What exactly is "the Hunter Biden story" that you believe nobody's ever heard of?
Because I don't spend any time in right-wing conspiracy circles, really, and here's the impression of "the Hunter Biden" story I've gotten from mainstream news sources:
- Hunter Biden is a bit of a screw-up who has at times had a drug problem. That in my opinion doesn't mean much politically speaking: Hunter does not and never has held political office, unlike other drug-addled kids of politically-important dads like George W Bush.
- Hunter Biden has traded on his dad's influence to try to get jobs that pay well and don't require real work, and sometimes got them because they were seen as potential bribes for his dad. Also not much of a story: That's something the rich and powerful have been doing for a long time, just ask former Senior White House Advisor Ivanka Trump.
- There's a laptop that allegedly is Hunter Biden's which has some embarrassing pictures of him on it. OK, so what? Taking or possessing embarrassing photos of yourself isn't a crime, it's something that's been happening since the invention of the camera.
- Joe Biden called his son and told him he loved him and wants to help Hunter sort out his life. News flash: A father loves his son! Scandal! Every parent with a child with an addiction problem that I've ever talked to recognized that phone call for exactly what it was: Trying to get and keep Hunter clean. Which is a good thing to do.
That doesn't seem super-suppressed, but it also doesn't seem like much of a story. And I've heard a lot more complaining about how this story is totally hidden from public view than why I should care about it or change my voting behavior because of it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Wednesday March 22 2023, @12:44PM
Ya gotta give him credit though. He's certainly made the case that some people are too dump to vote.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 22 2023, @02:31PM (2 children)
While you're busy downplaying shit, you forgot that Hunter was deeply involved in the corruption in Ukraine, and that he was under investigation in Ukraine. Daddy was holding billions in foreign aid for Ukraine, but he made it a condition that the prosecutor investigating Hunter be fired before he would release those billions.
The family is corrupt, but your mainstream media wants to pretend that they are just a normal American family.
And, the real point of this discussion isn't any particular scandal, instead, it is the fact that mainstream media downplays every wrong by a Democrat, and focuses on any scandal, real or imaginged, by a Republican. The laptop story was suppressed at election time, for the purpose of manipulating the election. We saw the same thing in the 2016 election, when mainstream media tried to suppress Clinton dirt, right at election time.
Or, to sum things up, The Establishment backs Establishment Joe, and the media falls into line because they are part of the Establishment.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 22 2023, @09:23PM (1 child)
Do you have any evidence at all supporting that claim, or are you just making stuff up?
Especially since I believe you're referring to when Joe Biden was VP, which means he had absolutely no official power over any foreign aid for anybody and would have had to convince his boss and the Secretary of State to go along with it. Meanwhile, a few years later we had a "perfect" phone call where the new president of the US, not Joe Biden, threatened to withhold foreign aid from Ukraine if Ukraine's government didn't announce a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden specifically.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 22 2023, @10:27PM
Listen to the story, in Joe's words, straight out of Joe's mouth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXA--dj2-CY [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by SecurityGuy on Wednesday March 22 2023, @04:07PM
Including...reporting on it? This is an often repeated line from from people who don't actually watch mainstream media. I got tired of correcting people who posted nonsense like "Why isn't MSM covering ?" Uh, dude, it's on the front page of cnn, msn, etc.
I believed this for quite a while, but what the last few years really brought home is that that isn't what happens. If there are 10 versions of a story, one true, some wrong, some outright lies, people seek out the one that says what they want to believe. People who think the Clintons eat babies in the basement of a pizza shop are not seeking out information that disproves it. More, if they like clicking on such stories, social media feeds them more of such stories, and to them it looks like truth and they can't understand why their friends and family think they're nuts.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by XivLacuna on Wednesday March 22 2023, @01:22AM (3 children)
Our elections in 2020 were so secure that there was no way for Democrats to manufacture votes but in 2016 it was so insecure that Russia was able to install Orange Man Bad Small Hands as president. This makes complete sense to people who watch late night comedy shows.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday March 22 2023, @01:51AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2, Insightful) by pTamok on Wednesday March 22 2023, @08:27AM
(1) Voter fraud (preventing people from casting votes, forcing people to cast votes for people preferred by the intimidator, and generating votes from dead/non-existent people) is amazingly low.
(2) Voter influencing by promulgating false information is scarily high.
While right-wing people falsely accuse the Democrats of (1), the right-wingers are busily doing (2). That is the difference.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 22 2023, @12:58PM
I think there's a telling pair of quotes about the alleged 2020 election fraud here:
- Tucker Carlson, to Sidney Powell [businessinsider.com]
- Tucker Carlson, to Laura Ingraham [go.com]
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2023, @12:36AM
Release the Kraken!
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Wednesday March 22 2023, @08:05AM
Why are you bringing Trump into this?
(Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday March 22 2023, @09:32AM (2 children)
If some dude was talking shit in the newspapers, would you see a problem then?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 22 2023, @12:26PM (1 child)
Apparently, you haven't read this entire discussion. I expect the owners of newspapers to talk shit. That is how it has been since the first printing press went into operation, after all. Or, did you think that every news paper in America supported the American Revolution from the beginning?
https://americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44517562.pdf [americanantiquarian.org]
There were firebrands publishing inflammatory bullshit in support of American independence, and there were neutralists publishing the news without getting involved, while there were loyalists advising that the US should remain part of the empire. All at the same time! Imagine that! And, also imagine, that all of them were publishing untruths as part of the news!
I'll remind you, that when everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday March 22 2023, @04:58PM
No, I hadn't read the rest of the discussion before posting -- my apologies.
Interesting link, btw, to that overview of loyalist newspapers -- something easily forgotten, as the victor (re)writes the final story. (Coincidentally, there's a current article [meduza.io] on Meduza about how a way of conveniently forgetting, like the French did with the Algerian War, could be a way out for Russia/Putin.)
I was distracted, with two things on my mind. One was Martha Gellhorn's description of the oppressive atmosphere in Hitler's Germany before the second World War, where every newspaper was spewing a mixture of self-pity, hate, disgust and superiority. The other was a twitter thread by an old friend, filled with vitriol, and the occasional threat, against the current government, the whole 'woke' thing and covid vaccines. People seem to think that, just because it's the Internet, you can forget all rules of common decency and say anything you feel like saying, the more shocking, the better.
Somewhere in WestWorld, the series, there is a quote "these violent delights will have violent ends". I wonder -- with the Internet keeping a record of everything we've done, said and written online, and our general inability to admit foolishness -- how this all will end.
(Score: 3, Informative) by istartedi on Wednesday March 22 2023, @04:52PM
If you lured a child in to a white van with candy, the fact that the child is too dumb to understand the consequences doesn't clear you.
Or perhaps a better example is people falling for the Nigerian Prince scam. From your PoV they're stupid; but under the law the don't "deserve what they got". If they can catch the con, they prosecute them.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.