Jennifer Bubel & Will Gittins
TROLL GROUPS
target Amber Heard and other women online
A report by Bot Sentinel shows how internet trolls target abuse towards female public figures like Amber Heard.
Study found that Twitter trolls used manipulation tactics in order to get anti-Amber Heard hashtags to trend on Twitter.
Trolls used 'hashtag spamming' to boost reach, giving the impression of overwhelming negativity towards the actress.
Once they had got a hashtag trending, users would brag about their achievement and encourage others to join in.
They used 'copypasta' techniques - copying and pasting duplicated content - to amplify claims that Heard was lying.
Trolls also harrassed and abused Heard's supporters, sending death threats and doxxing their personal information.
One woman was targeted by trolls who created a fake account with a photo of her deceased child.
The Bot Sentinel report analyzed tweets and found that 24% of the abusive accounts were set up in the past seven months.
Hashtags included #AmberHeardLsAnAbuser and #AmberHeardLsALiar, spelled with an L instead of an I to dupe the algorithm.
Report described the abuse as "one of the worst cases of cyberbullying and cyberstalking... that we've ever seen."