Do you remember the Depp-Heard defamation case from 2022? The bit about Amber Heard defecating on the bed really made rounds on the internet, as did parodies of her testimony. The “Justice for Johnny Depp” hashtag circulated widely, like, 11 billion views widely, and he ended up winning about fifteen million dollars from Heard. Heard’s counterclaim won her a more modest two million.

What I learned about the trial was what Instagram suggested on my “for you page,” and I was rather neutral on the issue. I simply didn’t care. If I were asked to have an opinion, it was thus: they’re both bad news, I’m sure the truth is somewhere in the middle, but she sounds totally nutso.

That’s almost exactly what the internet wanted me to think. Recently, I listened to a podcast called “Who Trolled Amber” by Tortoise Media. The podcast investigates claims of a manufactured social media campaign against Heard. After extensive research, it concludes that regardless of who, exactly how, or why, bot activity contributed heavily to negative Twitter content about Heard and the trial.

Because I hadn’t followed the trial closely at the time, I learned from this podcast that Depp had already lost a similar libel suit in 2016 against a newspaper in the UK after they published an article calling him a “wife-beater.” Both Depp and Heard testified in court, and it was ultimately found that twelve of fourteen alleged instances of abuse by Depp against Heard were proved to a civil standard. Therefore, the libel charges were found unsubstantiated. There’s news galore about both UK and American cases and plenty of pieces analyzing the public’s reaction; I invite you to read for yourself.

Ultimately, though, three things about this whole saga scared me. First, the court of public opinion condemned Heard, a survivor of alleged (and at least civilly substantiated abuse), promptly and vehemently, despite the several years it had been since #MeToo. Social media’s reaction was so significant CNN wrote a piece on TikTok and the trial. (I highly recommend it.) Furthermore, the jury was not sequestered, which means they had unfettered access to this public opinion, whether they wanted it or not.

Second, despite my disinclination to seek out content about the case, even my vapid opinion was formed and misinformed by social media. Because I did not care, I did not examine, and I had no idea what was true. Finally, while some, if not all, of the media influencing me was created and shared by real live humans, some of it almost certainly was not. And I had no way of knowing which was which.

The conversation about our digital footprint individually and as a nation—specifically, tensions between personal data, national security, and free speech—is having a moment right now after Congress passed a bi-partisan bill basically banning TikTok. There’s lots to say politically: to ban or not to ban. I’m not trying to argue about that. However, missing from the conversation is a consideration of misinformation and our responsibility to consider the content we consume carefully. TikTok is just in the public eye right now; I can and should say all the same things about Meta’s apps.

When I was scrolling on Threads today (Meta’s Twitter), I saw a woman with almost 17,000 followers extolling the positive economic and social state of China, things she had learned in the last week from RedNote (a TikTok alternative, also owned by China), concluding, “We are not the best country in the world. No one is out for our data. Communism in China appears to serve the greatest good of the society. As one Chinese person said on RedNote: ‘Americans think they’re free because they’re free to have an opinion.’”

I thought this was satire initially, but once I read further, I realized it was not. Stories from my Chinese Christian friend and college roommate were the reason I was skeptical of several of her claims, and the reason I knew others were outright false.

What if I didn’t have that experience? I would likely hold another middling, vapid, and yet largely inaccurate opinion that I didn’t even know I held. It is exhausting to research and critically consume every single piece of content we are inundated with, intentionally or unintentionally. I’m not advocating for that, necessarily.

I am, however, recognizing the tremendous hubris I held for so long in thinking that social media didn’t really influence me in the Depp-Heard case. I am reminding myself that singing and dancing and memes and trending audios and all kinds of content, intentionally or not, contribute to and perpetuate discourses motivated and advanced by people and ideologies in ways we are not always aware of.

I’m not trying to sound like a Boomer or a conspiracy theorist; social media can accomplish plenty of good things. Free speech is important, and significant concerns regarding its continued existence online are valid. Acting to sequester oneself out of fear is usually not a realistic or valuable reaction. These things are all true. But to think that we can use social media without being influenced by it is the height of arrogance.

Maybe it’s just me and my media illiteracy, but given what I’ve been reading, it seems as if we are not appropriately alarmed. Not alarmed enough at the way our thinking can be insidiously influenced by propaganda and bots, by enough people saying enough things enough times whether or not they are true, by rooting for an underdog who slyly constructed himself to be seen that way.

I don’t have a solution, nor do I think there necessarily is one. But when I see everyone online talking about something, having a “take” if you will, I think about Amber Heard. And I do at least a little bit of googling.

1 Comment

  1. Paul M Spyksma

    Amber Heard was trashed by a firm that Johnny Depp hired to do exactly that, create an online surge of opprobrium and ruin her reputation. Justin Baldoni hired the same firm to degrade the reputation of Blake Lively when she complained about harassment on the set of “It Ends with Us” that Baldoni directed. They succeeded in both cases. Look it up in the NYT.

    Reply

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