An investigation into Twitter hate campaigns targeting Amber Heard suggests that actress Evan Rachel Wood and former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson will be targeted next.
A report created by Bot Sentinel CEO Christopher Bouzy looked into the twitter activity surrounding Heard's name during the recent defamation trial against her ex-husband Johnny Depp.
Heard ultimately lost the multi-million dollar case which dominated the news cycle, revealing sensational details from the celebrity marriage.
In February 2021, Wood accused Marilyn Manson of abusing her when she was 18-years-old and he was 37. In March 2022, Manson has filed a lawsuit against Wood for defamation, and has consistently denied the claims.
Since then Wood has also been subject to online abuse in a scenario which has echoes of the Heard-Depp trial. Not just on Twitter, Wood has been subject to a number of critical posts across YouTube and TikTok too with hashtags like "#Hoax, #AmberHeard2.0 and #MenToo" being used.
The Bot Sentinal report also cites Hutchinson, the former Trump aide who gave testimony during the January 6 committee hearings.
"Twitter trolls that attacked Amber Heard and her allies recently began attacking Evan Rachel Wood and Cassidy Hutchinson. The trolls compared the women to Amber Heard and used the same abusive tactics against the women," Bouzy wrote.
The key findings from the report identified 627 Twitter accounts focused predominantly on tweeting negatively about Heard and her female supporters, one of whom is now seemingly Wood, as she shared the Bot Sentinel report on her Instagram.
Other notable incidents of online abuse towards women supporting Heard during the trial, which lasted between April 11 and June 1, 2022, included journalist Taylor Lorenz and Eve Barlow, Heard's friend who was removed from the courtroom early on for tweeting and texting from the front row.
The report, titled "Targeted Trolling and Trend Manipulation: How Organized Attacks on Amber Heard and Other Women Thrive on Twitter," found 3,288 account using the hashtags #AmberHeardIsAnAbuser,
#AmberHeardLsAnAbuser, #AmberHeardIsALiar, and #AmberHeardLsALiar.
Twenty four percent of those accounts using the hashtags were created in the past seven months.
This statistic should raise an eyebrow, according to the Chief Executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Imran Ahmed.
"It's alarming how many accounts appear to be set up specifically to anonymously abuse, harass and terrorize other people, including public figures on social media," Ahmed said. "No one should have to endure abuse, it acts like a toll on public discourse."
He went on to suggest that the hate is often "levied disproportionately" towards women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people and the most vulnerable.
Bouzy's report also highlighted an incident regarding an academic who was trolled by an account using the image of her deceased daughter.
"Perpetrators of abuse appear to be doing so without fear of recrimination—this failure to enforce any kind of negative consequences for rule-breaking is a common finding of almost all of CCDH's research into harmful online behavior," Ahmed continued.
"It raises serious questions about social media governance, and what—if any—measures are in place to monitor potentially false accounts created for nefarious purposes."
Twitter has shown instances of policing the landscape of its site recently, for which is received a vocal backlash.
Canadian psychologist and prominent YouTube personality Jordan Peterson was suspended from Twitter for "deadnaming" the actor Elliot Page.
He has stated that he'd "rather die" than apologize for his remarks and delete the tweet, which means his account with remain banned. As a result, the likes of Elon Musk, Ben Shapiro and many other prominent conservative political commentators criticized Twitter for its stance.
Bot Sentinel's aim is to "help fight disinformation and targeted harassment" on Twitter in the hope that people can engage with each other without fear of "inauthentic accounts."
The report made no mention of Twitter bots or inauthentic accounts, but Ahmed believes it's still a serious issue to be concerned with online.
"Whether it's bots doling out the abuse or 'real people', the end result is the same. Again, the common factor is Big Tech's refusal to enforce its own rules designed to protect people," he said.
Bot Sentinel is a nonpartisan group, but does include a disclaimer that it was previously contacted by Heard's legal team in 2020 to help investigate social media activity against her.
Newsweek has reached out to Wood for additional comment.
Newsweek have also reached out to Heard's representatives for comment.
