The anti-Amber Heard Twitter campaign has been labelled one of the worst cases of ‘cyberbullying and cyberstalking', according to a report released by Bot Sentinel.
The research firm specialising in identifying mis/disinformation released an independent report titled ‘How Organised Attacks on Amber Heard and Other Women Thrive on Twitter’.
Bot Sentinel looked at over 14,000 tweets using the hashtags #AmberHeardIsAnAbuser, #AmberHeardLsAnAbuser, #AmberHeardIsALiar and #AmberHeardLsALiar.
It was found that these hashtags purposely deceived the social media platform while ‘manipulating’ algorithms and hashtag trends.
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The report read: “What we observed was one of the worst cases of cyberbullying and cyberstalking by a group of Twitter accounts that we've ever seen.”
They also discovered that 24 per cent of accounts tweeting anti-Amber Heard rhetoric were created in the past seven months.
However, Heard wasn’t the only one targeted, as women who supported the 36-year-old actor were also sent ‘vulgar and threatening' messages.
In one horrific example, the report mentions how one fake account taunted a Heard supporter by tweeting images of her late child.
It read: “The trolls didn't limit their abuse to women; they also targeted their family members.
"In at least one case, the trolls doxxed a woman's family and created a fake Twitter account using a photo of the woman's deceased child to troll her.”
The study also accused Twitter of not doing enough to ‘mitigate the platform manipulation’, which led to the ongoing relentless ‘abuse and targeted harassment’.
Despite Twitter trolls violating several of the social media platform’s policies, not enough was done to combat hashtag spamming and 'copypasta', which is copying and pasting to amplify messages and abuse.
They added: “Twitter essentially left the women to fend for themselves with little to no support from the platform.
"The abuse and targeted harassment continued well after the Depp vs. Heard trial ended, and unless Twitter takes action, the abuse and targeted harassment will still continue.”
The report said that Twitter has become a 'weapon' against its users and instead needs to ‘aggressively’ police accounts while suspending abusive hashtags.
Bot Sentinel concluded: “Far too many tweets that break Twitter's rules are incorrectly found not to have violated Twitter's rules, and this is frustrating for users.
“We believe the deficient current reporting system will have the unintended effect of users reporting abusive content less often, which in turn would allow abusive content to flourish."
Topics: News, US News, Twitter, Amber Heard
Charisa Bossinakis