Troll From "Vote From Home" Hoax In 2016 Election Charged With Spreading Election Misinformation
Douglass Mackey, the man behind the "Ricky Vaughn" Twitter account, has been charged with spreading election misinformation after launching a Vote From Home hoax in the 2016 United States Presidential Election. Vaughn's campaign involved creating images encouraging Hillary Clinton voters to "vote from home" by texting "Hillary" to a fake number and spreading the images across social media. At least 4,900 people texted the number, the Justice Department alleges.
Mackey along with other conspirators has been charged by the Justice Department for participating in a DM group focused on "how to best influence the election" and worked to "create, refine, and share memes and hashtags that members of the groups would subsequently post and distribute."
While the criminal complaint did not list the co-conspirators, the New York Times reports that one of the conspirators was Baked Alaska, who was recently arrested for his role in the Storming of the Capitol.
If convicted, Mackey faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.
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Sterglitch
Wait, this is illegal? Were all of the 4chan iphone hoaxes illegal too, then? What about the more recent "georgians should write in trump" memes?
TheOtherRightSide
There's freedom of speech, but not freedom from consequences.
FrankFisher
This is unbelievable. This was a joke, one similar to hundreds of others. I thought you yanks had free speech? So when Hillary literally pays for a fake dossier of supposed Russian intel, and the media talk about it for four years, THAT is okay, but a guy making memes is going to jail?
This is fascism guys. Literal fascism. They are jailing people for laughing.
Lark88
Free speech is dying in my country.