10h 35min, jul 23, 2020 y - EMAIL Jenny Afia The Times Depp allegations -- possible comment

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From: Ames, Jonathan, The Times
To: Jenny Afia
Date: 23 July 2020 at 18:36:32 BST
Subject: Depp allegations -- possible comment

Dear Ms Afia,

We are working on a story for Saturday's around the Depp defamation action and wanted to give you an opportunity to respond.
The story is based on allegations made in a report compiled by experts for Amber Heard's lawyers earlier this year and seen by The Times.

The lawyers asked the experts to investigate whether Ms Heard had been a victim of "an ongoing targeted harassment and smear campaign, and if Johnny Depp or [his] associates are responsible ..."
The report claims to have "identified 13 active inauthentic accounts recently created specifically to target the Twitter account of Ms Heard. We also identified an additional 22 inauthentic accounts that became inactive shortly after attacking Ms. Heard.
Approximately 1.7% of the accounts we analyzed were inauthentic, and if we extrapolate that number, we estimate 340 of the 20,000 accounts tweeting about Ms. Heard were inauthentic accounts".

The report goes on to highlight that
"inauthentic" Twitter accounts had been
"sharing links" to two separate Change.org
petitions. One is calling for DC Entertainment to remove Ms Heard from Aquaman 2, and the second petition is demanding L'Oréal remove her as their spokeswoman.

The report says: "We noted the suspicious timing and strange activity associated with the petitions, and [Ms Heard's lawyers] requested we investigate the activity further.

"While monitoring the Remove Amber Heard from Aquaman 2 petition, we observed a significant number of fraudulent signatures, and we estimate 1 out of every 3 signatures were conspicuously fake or highly suspicious".

The report also maintains that the tweets are being automated, in other words, sent by bots.The report says: "Whereas submitting fake signatures manually doesn't require much skill, using a tool to submit signatures automatically requires a more advanced skill set. The average overzealous fan or disgruntled troll wouldn't possess the relevant know-how to automate fake signature submissions."

The report implies that it is possible that associates of Mr Depp could have instructed sophisticated bot specialists to do the job.
The report goes on to say that "it was brought to our attention that accounts that were targeting Ms Heard were also promoting and praising Adam Waldman. It was unusual to us that dozens of inauthentic accounts were tweeting about Mr Waldman and using similar talking points."

Mr Waldman is reported to be Mr Depp's US lawyer. Earlier this week he was reprimanded by Mr Justice Nicol over a tweet he sent regarding evidence in the trial at the Royal Courts of Justice.

The report points out that Mr Waldman also represents Oleg Deripaska, adding that Mr Deripaska has ties to individuals sophisicated enough to orchestrate a targeted attack on social media platforms similar to what we are witnessing with Ms Heard".

The report continues: "This behavior is indicative of inauthentic accounts that are actively coordinating messaging and attempting to manipulate the Twitter platform to avoid detection.

"We analyzed 183 accounts tweeting about Adam Waldman using the classification model, and the model classified 56 (30.6%) as problematic."

Has Mr Depp or Mr Waldman any comments on these allegations? I should be grateful for a response by 4pm tomorrow [Friday].

Kind regards,
Jonathan Ames
--
Jonathan Ames
Legal editor
The Times newspaper

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