Trial of 2016 Twitter Troll to Test Limits of Online Speech – The New York Times

Douglass Mackey tried to trick Black people into thinking they could vote by text in the Clinton-Trump presidential election, prosecutors said.Send any friend a storyAs a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.Prosecutors say Douglass Mackey went too far by trying to dissuade people from voting in the 2016 presidential election.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesMarch 20, 2023, 3:00 a.m. ETThe images appeared on Twitter in late 2016 just as the presidential campaign was entering its final stretch. Some featured the message “vote for Hillary” and the phrases “avoid the line” and “vote from home.”Aimed at Democratic voters, and sometimes singling out Black people, the messages were actually intended to help Donald J. Trump, not Hillary Clinton. The goal, federal prosecutors said, was to suppress votes for Ms. Clinton by persuading her supporters to falsely believe they could cast presidential ballots by text message.The misinformation campaign was carried out by a group of conspirators, prosecutors said, including a man in his 20s who called himself Ricky Vaughn. On Monday he will go on trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn under his real name, Douglass Mackey, after being charged with conspiring to spread misinformation designed
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