Thread by @kattenbarge

During the trial, viral posts about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard were almost all in favor of Depp, but things are starting to shift. I wanted to break down some of the ways individuals were able to fight back against the misinformation & harassment campaign 🪡

To preface: I think that these efforts are important to highlight because they show how to fight back against the modern smear campaign playbook. What happened during the trial will continue to happen in cases involving celebrities, but also in politics, social justice, etc

Two of the people who have had the most impact are @cocainecross and @k4mil1aa. Both create threads that distill important info from court docs and testimony for social media, which is how the pro-Depp creators amassed widespread support for him in the first place

https://twitter.com/cocainecross/status/1553506807766663169

Here's an example of one of @k4mil1aa's threads that went viral with important info that has been twisted into misinfo online. I've since seen people in TikTok comments, for example, directing confused individuals to her account & threads.

https://twitter.com/k4mil1aa/status/1542890287093071873

Threads may seem like low hanging fruit in our polluted information ecosystem, but they're not. They provide a quick "explainer" model that can gain traction in the way a long article or video can't. Some journalists recognize this and make threads for their stories

When it comes to pollution (misinfo, disinfo, smear campaigns) in the information ecosystem, it's hard to remove those pollutants. Social media companies don't have a good way to clear out falsehoods, and the idea that we should combat fake news has been politicized

So what do we do when we can't get rid of the fake news? We create alternatives with legitimate information and fact-checking and evidence that are in the same format as the disinfo, so that it reaches the same audience as the disinfo.

Twitter is an easier platform to do this on than YouTube or TikTok, because both require more effort & tech savvy in creating video (both longform and shortform). That's why pro-Depp narratives still dominate those platforms, because there are more pro-Depp creators

And the trick of these pro-Depp creators is that they brand their content as objective or even journalistic, when it's actually propaganda. They're propagandists. And they make a LOT of money & engagement from creating propaganda.

On the flip side, with pro-Heard creators, there isn't a monetary incentive. If you are compiling objective threads about the trial, you're probably doing it out of your own desire to clean up our information ecosystem. Basically, the system relies on more good actors than bad

The good actors can't necessarily profit in the same way the propagandists can, so this presents an unequal playing field. We need more salaried journalists to make the same type of content. But right now we have awesome indie creators like @cocainecross and @k4mil1aa

Moving away from Twitter, there are some other areas online that have been working to combat the disinfo around the trial. The r/deuxmoi and r/deppdelusion subreddits are good examples. These spaces are much smaller/less active than the pro-Depp spaces, though

These smaller spaces and creators have to operate under the constant threat of harassment and having the propagandists and their supporters aiming their collective smear efforts at the objective or pro-Heard info sources (just survey my replies)

https://twitter.com/saraashleyo/status/1532168126984486915

I wish I knew more ways to combat online harassment and intimidation, but there are no easy answers & it can take a huge personal toll. So I'll end this thread by thanking the creators I mentioned as well as anyone who has had the courage & honesty to cover this trial fairly