Twitter troll arrested for election interference related to disinformation campaign

[Auburn85 434]

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/twitter-troll-arrested-election-interference-related-disinformation-campaign-n1255864

 

 

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The notorious Twitter troll and alt-right figure Douglass Mackey, known better by his alter ego, Ricky Vaughn, was arrested on Wednesday on federal charges of election interference stemming from an alleged voter disinformation campaign during the 2016 election.

Mackey is charged with conspiring with others “to disseminate misinformation designed to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote,” according to the newly unsealed criminal complaint.

 

The charges are a potentially tectonic shift in how the federal government tries to enforce laws against election interference. False claims about elections on the internet and social media have been a major problem, with large platforms including Facebook and Twitter trying to limit their spread.

But there are few examples of social media posts having been used as the basis for such criminal charges.

"I haven't seen anything like this about information on social media accounts before," said Chip Stewart, a professor of journalism at Texas Christian University who specializes in media law and communication technology.

After an initial appearance at a federal courthouse in West Palm Beach, Mackey was released on a $50,000 bond. Mackey's federal public defender declined to comment, citing a policy against doing so for pending cases.

Outside of election misinformation, Mackey was a well-known figure in the alt-right movement, and a prolific poster of anti-Semitic content. Banned from Twitter for “targeted harassment” in 2016, Mackey opened several new Twitter accounts to evade continued bans. His real identity was revealed by The Huffington Post in 2018.

An analysis by MIT’s Media Lab determined Mackey to be among the top 150 influencers of the 2016 presidential election. Mackey was 107, ranking above NBC News and the Drudge Report.

Mackey is accused of using Twitter to mislead voters into casting their ballots via text. Mackey was involved in numerous group direct messages, including one with the name “War Room,” wherein dozens of individuals shared ideas on how to influence the election, according to federal prosecutors. In these group chats, Mackey and others created, refined and shared memes and hashtags meant to misinform potential voters. The group created several memes falsely suggesting celebrities were supporting former President Donald Trump’s candidacy. Another campaign hatched in the “Draft our Daughters” meme, which falsely suggested Hillary Clinton supported making women eligible for the draft.

In September 2016, Mackey’s groups turned to creating memes that misled potential voters about how they would be able to cast votes, creating memes that falsely claimed that supporters could cast their vote by posting on Facebook or Twitter or by voting through text message. According to the complaint, 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted their votes to the number provided.

“There is no place in public discourse for lies and misinformation to defraud citizens of their right to vote,” acting United States Attorney Seth DuCharme said in a press release announcing the charges. “With Mackey’s arrest, we serve notice that those who would subvert the democratic process in this manner cannot rely on the cloak of Internet anonymity to evade responsibility for their crimes. They will be investigated, caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

Mackey was arrested in West Palm Beach, Florida, and will appear via videoconference.

Stewart said the federal government will need to prove that Mackey's actions "amounted to 'injuring' or 'oppressing' the right to vote."

"I just don't know if people attempting to text a vote is going to amount to injuring or oppressing their right to vote," he said. "They certainly seem to have evidence that they intended to suppress voting, particularly among Black voters, which may be enough for a conviction."

 

 

[Auburnfan91 1,408]

Seeing this story triggered my memory of seeing a story about a year or two ago that got some modest coverage but nothing ever came of it. 

I wonder if this guy will be arrested for his involvement in disinformation in an election? I'm guessing a no since it's been 2 years since this story was reported.... lol

 

Internet billionaire Reid Hoffman apologizes for funding a group tied to disinformation in Alabama race

By Tony Romm, Craig Timberg and Aaron C. Davis
Dec. 26, 2018 at 11:25 p.m. UTC

 

Internet billionaire Reid Hoffman apologized on Wednesday for funding a group linked to a “highly disturbing” effort that spread disinformation during last year’s Alabama special election for U.S. Senate, but said he was not aware that his money was being used for this purpose.

Hoffman’s statement is his first acknowledgement of his ties to a campaign that adopted tactics similar to those deployed by Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential election. In Alabama, the Hoffman-funded group allegedly used Facebook and Twitter to undermine support for Republican Roy Moore and boost Democrat Doug Jones, who narrowly won the race. Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and an early Facebook investor, also expressed support for a federal investigation into what happened, echoing Jones’s position from last week.

The Alabama effort was one of a series of multi-million-dollar expenditures that Hoffman made to dozens of left-leaning groups in the aftermath of the 2016 election, when he offered himself to reeling Democrats as a source of money, connections and Silicon Valley-style disruption to the staid world of party politics.

Hoffman invested $750,000 in one group, American Engagement Technologies, or AET, according to a person close to the matter but not authorized to discuss Hoffman’s spending. Hoffman’s statement Wednesday referred to AET, which has been linked to a campaign to spread disinformation targeting Moore.

But the statement left key facts unaddressed, including a full accounting of everyone who crafted and executed the campaign. The effort was the subject of a presentation in September to a group of liberal-leaning technology experts who met in downtown Washington to discuss electoral tactics, according to one of the attendees and documents from the meeting obtained by The Washington Post. This person spoke on the condition of anonymity because those at the gathering were required to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Hoffman said in the statement, “I find the tactics that have been recently reported highly disturbing. For that reason, I am embarrassed by my failure to track AET – the organization I did support – more diligently as it made its own decisions to perhaps fund projects that I would reject.”

The head of AET, former Obama administration official and Google engineer Mikey Dickerson, has not responded to numerous requests for comment.

Hoffman's public apology follows news reports on the effort, known as Project Birmingham, which involved the creation of misleading Facebook pages to persuade Alabama conservatives to vote for somebody other than Moore.

One Project Birmingham tactic described in the document claimed backers had created false online evidence that a network of Russian automated accounts, called bots, were supporting Moore. In his statement, Hoffman called this report “the most disturbing aspect” of the disinformation effort. This and some other key details were first reported in the New York Times.

Hoffman’s statement said AET had provided funding for New Knowledge, a Texas-based research firm, whose chief executive, Jonathon Morgan, has acknowledged using disinformation tactics on a small scale in the Alabama election for a research project. Morgan has repeatedly denied involvement in the broader effort described in news reports.

 

Morgan said Wednesday that he wasn’t aware that the funding for the work in Alabama, which he portrayed as for research purposes, came from Hoffman. “I can’t object strongly enough to the characterization that we were trying to influence an election in any way,” Morgan said.

Facebook suspended Morgan and other individuals on Saturday for violating its policies against “coordinated inauthentic” behavior during the 2017 Alabama election.

In his statement, Hoffman sought to distance himself from misleading online tactics, saying, “I want to be unequivocal: there is absolutely no place in our democracy for manipulating facts or using falsehoods to gain political advantage.” Along with donations to party candidates, Hoffman said he has backed “dozens of organizations.”

Hoffman coordinated many of his investments with Investing in US, a group led by Dmitri Mehlhorn, Hoffman’s longtime top political advisor. Mehlhorn said on Wednesday he was “not aware of Project Birmingham.”

Mehlhorn previously acknowledged a willingness to experiment with some tactics honed by the Internet Research Agency, the Russian disinformation operation charged with U.S. officials with several crimes for meddling in the U.S. election.

“The Internet Research Agency engaged in many, many tactics, some of which I think it is appropriate for us to mirror and some of which I think we should disavow. The tactics they engaged in [that] we need to disavow [include] misinformation and promoting racial hatred,” Mehlhorn said last week. “The tactics we need to mirror are really good social microtargeting.”

 

Throughout the 2018 election season, Hoffman directed his cash toward other organizations that aimed to target conservatives on Facebook. These groups created pages and purchased ads on the social-networking site with the goal of trying to “appeal to the center right” of the political spectrum, Mehlhorn said. They sought to get those users’ attention on topics including patriotism and sports, then presented them with real political news stories and policy-focused ads.

 

Central to that effort was News for Democracy, which received money from Hoffman, according to a person with knowledge of the investment but not authorized to speak on the record. Over the past year, it created or promoted Facebook pages including “Sounds Like Tennessee,” the person said.

The Facebook page appeared to be about sharing news about college football and local hunters. But it also bought at least one ad that criticized since-elected GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn for her record on opioid abuse, according to Facebook’s ad archive.

In total, News for Democracy had vast reach: Its ads garnered at least 16 million impressions on Facebook over a two-week period in September, according to researchers at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering.

The organization is not required to reveal its donors, and Hoffman declined to comment through an aide. Hoffman's top political advisor, Mehlhorn, said he sits on the group’s board of directors and that Investing in US has pitched it as a potential place for Democratic donors to direct their support.

“Social media tends to drive people into hyper partisan camps,” said Dan Fletcher, a co-founder of MotiveAI, another Hoffman-backed startup that sought to target political messages to voters on Facebook. “Part of what we’ve tried to figure out is whether there’s a way you can reach people with facts that stretch beyond just a left versus right dichotomy.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/26/internet-billionaire-reid-hoffman-apologizes-funding-group-behind-disinformation-alabama-race/

[creed 1,697]

Twidiots will be Twidiotsboard , and this board has many Twidiots....lol

[aubiefifty 17,487]

14 hours ago, creed said:

Twidiots will be Twidiotsboard , and this board has many Twidiots....lol

i am the typical geezer who will not sign up for tweeter because it would probably run my phone battery down too quick. lol  and that might not even be true......lol

[Auburn85 434]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/far-right-influencer-douglass-mackey-convicted-voter-suppression-schem-rcna77746

 

 

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Far-right influencer convicted in 2016 voter suppression scheme

 

March 31, 2023, 9:52 PM CDT / Source: Associated Press

By The Associated Press

NEW YORK — A self-styled far-right propagandist from Florida was convicted Friday of charges alleging that he conspired to deprive individuals of their right to vote in the 2016 presidential election.

Douglass Mackey, 33, of West Palm Beach, Florida, was convicted in Brooklyn federal court before Judge Ann M. Donnelly after a one-week trial. On the internet, he was known as “Ricky Vaughn.”

 

In 2016, Mackey had about 58,000 Twitter followers and was ranked by the MIT Media Lab as the 107th-most important influencer of the then-upcoming presidential election, prosecutors said. He had described himself as an “American nationalist” who regularly retweeted Trump and promoted conspiracy theories about voter fraud by Democrats.

Mackey, who was arrested in January 2021, could face up to 10 years in prison. His sentencing is set for Aug. 16.

His lawyer, Andrew Frisch, said in an email that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan will have multiple reasons to choose from to vacate the conviction.

“We are optimistic about our chances on appeal,” Frisch said.

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a release that the jury rejected Mackey’s cynical attempt to use the First Amendment free speech protections to shield himself from criminal liability for a voter suppression scheme.

“Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality,” he said.

The government alleged that from September 2016 to November 2016, Mackey conspired with several other internet influencers to spread fraudulent messages to Clinton supporters.

Prosecutors told jurors during the trial that Mackey urged supporters of then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to “vote” via text message or social media, knowing that those endorsements were not legally valid votes.

At about the same time, prosecutors said, he was sending tweets suggesting that it was important to limit “black turnout” at voting booths. One tweet he sent showed a photo of a Black woman with a Clinton campaign sign, encouraging people to “avoid the line” and “vote from home,” court papers said.

Using social media pitches, one image encouraging phony votes utilized a font similar to one used by the Clinton campaign in authentic ads, prosecutors said. Others tried to mimic Clinton’s ads in other ways, they added.

By Election Day in 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or something similar to a text number that was spread by multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and co-conspirators, prosecutors said.

Twitter has said it worked closely with appropriate authorities on the issue.

 

 

[homersapien 11,681]

Deliberate scamming of people should be against the law, whether for monetary or political gain.