Twitter influencer sentenced for trying to trick Clinton supporters into voting by text
abcnews.go.com
A social media influencer has been sentenced to seven months for falsely telling Hillary Clinton supporters they could cast their 2016 vote for Clinton via text message.

Douglass Mackey, the social media influencer known as “Ricky Vaughn,” was sentenced Wednesday to seven months in prison for falsely assuring supporters of Hillary Clinton they could cast their vote in the 2016 presidential election through text messages or social media posts.

Mackey was prosecuted under the Ku Klux Klan Act that was enacted during the Reconstruction era in response to efforts by the KKK to prevent recently emancepated Blacks from voting.

Mackey was 26 years old in 2015 when he began posting on Twitter under the pseudonym “Ricky Vaughn,” amassing 51,000 followers on Twitter and ranking among the “most influential voices” posting about the 2016 presidential election, according to a list compiled by M.I.T.

Federal prosecutors in New York said Mackey was intent on originating hashtags designed to “cause as much chaos as possible” by creating “controversy … for the sole purpose of disparaging Hillary Clinton.”

At 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 1, 2016, Mackey published the first tweet that falsely announced that people could register their vote by texting on their phones, according to trial testimony. Additional tweets followed.

      • circuscritic
        -5•1 year ago

        Unintended consequences. It’s like you think I care about this one guy, I don’t. I care about this NEW power and how it will absolutely be ABUSED by the next Republican DOJ.

        ZERO proven victims.

        So he’s convicted on the NEW precedent that memes cause criminal harm, even if that harm can’t be proven with a single victim.

        Gee. Can’t see how that could possibly go wrong.

        You know what’s not a protected class? Being trans.

        Do you think a GOP attorney general might go after makers of pro-trans memes? What memes do you think President MTG or Boebert would send her attorney general after?

        Or do you think this will only get used against “bad guy meme makers”?

          • circuscritic
            -1•1 year ago

            Look, I’m sure this guy is a complete douche. But the DOJ just gained a whole lot more power by using a KKK era law to criminalize memes.

            Illegal memes, and the DOJ was not even required to provide a single victim. Think about, or don’t.

            I bet you’d probably be happy if Jonathan Swift had been locked up as well. After all, cannibalism is illegal.