Douglass Mackey, a digital strategist, was sentenced to seven months in prison for using misleading tweets that mimicked Hillary Clinton advertisements to spread false information before the 2016 presidential election.
The evidence that Mackey took part in private Twitter groups devoted to disseminating lies in favor of Donald J. Trump was shown during the trial; one member of the group called this technique “the deep psyops of meme war.”
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Who is Douglass Mackey?
Douglass Mackey is 34 years old. Ann M. Donnelly, a United States District Judge, has sentenced Douglass Mackey, popularly known as “Ricky Vaughn,” to seven months.
His participation in a plot to obstruct prospective voters’ ability to cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election is the basis for this sentence. Following a three-week trial in Brooklyn, Mackey was found guilty in March 2023 of the charge of conspiracy against rights.
As evidenced throughout the trial, by 2016 Mackey had around 58,000 followers on Twitter. Mackey was also named as one of the prominent influencers in the forthcoming presidential election by the MIT Media Lab in February 2016.
Between September and November of 2016, Mackey worked with other prominent Twitter users and members of closed online communities to use social media, particularly Twitter, to disseminate false information. These texts urged Hillary Clinton’s followers to vote by social media or text messages—a tactic that was illegal according to the law.
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The prosecution argued that a large amount of Mackey’s actions were protected by the First Amendment. On the other hand, they claimed that a few days prior to the election, Mr. Mackey posted pictures aimed at Black and Latino voters using the alias Ricky Vaughn. These pictures misrepresented voting via text message as an option. Prosecutors claim that the goal was to dissuade people from voting for Mrs. Clinton.
A Black woman was depicted in one picture, while a statement in Spanish was shown in another. Both had Clinton campaign-style logos with small lettering claiming them to be from “Hillary for President.”
