Through the looking glass | Who Trolled Amber Ep 4

Transcript

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Speaker 35 Tortoise.

Speaker 37 Just a warning before we start, this series contains strong language and descriptions of violence.

Speaker 37 Okay, we're going to go right

Speaker 37 on Sherwood Avenue.

Speaker 38 If this is what it seems like, then it's really scary because it shows that these campaigns don't just affect celebrities, they could happen to anyone.

Speaker 37 And

Speaker 38 that is quite disconcerting.

Speaker 37 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 37 I've come back to Florida with my producer, Xavier. We're in a place called Tampa Bay.
We're here to meet a man called Chris Herrin.

Speaker 37 It's about as far away from Johnny Depp and Hollywood as you can get. Hi, very nice to meet you.
I'm Alexi Chris.

Speaker 19 Nice to meet you, Alexi. Hi, I'm Xavier.

Speaker 37 Hi, Xavier. Nice to meet you.

Speaker 37 Thank you very much. It's a beautiful home.

Speaker 36 Thank you very much.

Speaker 37 Chris lives out in the suburbs. He's got a big house on one of those streets I recognize from pretty much any 80s American high school movie.

Speaker 37 Manicured lawns, flagpoles flying the stars and stripes, basketball hoops on the grass. Chris used to have a very normal life here with his wife Cheryl and his sons Cameron and Tristan.

Speaker 36 We came from Virginia. We got tired of the snow.
The boys were young. They were in first grade in kindergarten and we said, we're not leaving.

Speaker 36 Fast forward 18 years and the Cameron thing happened, as I call it, the accident.

Speaker 37 Today, he lives in the house alone.

Speaker 36 We love it. The boys love it.
Not so much anymore.

Speaker 36 Cameron doesn't... I don't think he'll live here anymore.
He'll come back whenever.

Speaker 37 Chris has got this tanned face and sandy blonde hair. In his board shorts and t-shirt, he looks like any other off-duty dad.
But when I talk to him, he's worn and nervous.

Speaker 39 But look, I mean, I'd like, let's make this as relaxed

Speaker 37 He speaks quietly and the tension shows in his face, in his mannerisms. He fidgets, taps the table, sometimes contradicts himself.

Speaker 37 And he has good reason to feel a bit broken because his son Cameron is in jail and he'll be there for a long time.

Speaker 36 People ask me, I go, I lost my son the day of that accident.

Speaker 36 The son I knew, now I got this new son.

Speaker 37 Cameron is the reason we're in Tampa Bay. I first read about him on the website of the local newspaper, the Tampa Bay Times.

Speaker 37 And that felt appropriate because Cameron's story is the archetypal local news story. But it didn't stay local.

Speaker 37 Something happened to upend the family's life in a way that they could never have predicted.

Speaker 36 I call it my Alice in Wonderland life, since it started.

Speaker 37 After months of investigation, Xavia and I are now much closer to understanding what happened to Amber Heard.

Speaker 37 Johan and Kai Cheng, the data experts, have told us that bots and trolls played a significant role in driving the hate towards her.

Speaker 37 According to Johan, more than half of all anti-AMBA heard tweets he looked at came from inauthentic accounts.

Speaker 37 But we're still stuck on the question of who. Who could have commissioned these accounts to attack her?

Speaker 37 Daniel Mackey, the former spy, told me to look for other cases where bots may have played a part.

Speaker 37 I'm hoping that what happened to Cameron will give me new insight insight into what happened to Amber.

Speaker 37 I'm Alexei Mostras and this is Who Trolled Amber, episode 4 Through the Looking Glass.

Speaker 36 Cameron was very free-spirited. I always thought Rick's Taker excelled at Taekwondo, excelled at Paintball.
He was getting ready to go to England with a buddy.

Speaker 36 They had already already booked the flight, already got his passport. He was big into working out, lifting weights, and he got just huge.
He had just graduated high school the week before. Wow.

Speaker 36 Yeah, we'd just gone through graduation certainly. We bought him the car, the Mustang.

Speaker 36 I didn't think anything of it. It's just a car to me.

Speaker 37 The year is 2018, and Cameron Heron is 18 years old.

Speaker 36 He's about to go to college, but he's got one last summer hanging out with his best friend John and his brother tristan him and john were going to go lift weights john was late to our house cameron begged tristan over and over to go with him tristan said no no no no no

Speaker 36 and then uh tristan finally caved in i think just to give in to his brother they took off i said be careful and i was getting ready to go get my hair cut

Speaker 36 and the phone rang. I mean, this wasn't,

Speaker 36 it couldn't have been more than God,

Speaker 36 20 or 30 minutes. It was instantaneous to me how fast the phone call happened.
And it was Cameron. And I dropped it because I pulled it out of my pocket.
I didn't have a good handle on it.

Speaker 36 And I dropped it, and it went straight down to the cement and hung up.

Speaker 36 I just dialed it back and I handed it to my wife. And I said, I'm going to go get the keys.

Speaker 36 And all I heard him was was screaming. I didn't couldn't understand one word he said, just massive, blood-curdling screaming.

Speaker 39 So you knew something was wrong?

Speaker 36 Bad. So I ran up, got the keys.
By the time we got there, everything was gone.

Speaker 36 There was no

Speaker 36 ambulance, no fire truck, no nothing. We got to even go up to the boys because all three of them, they'd sat him in a triangle and in between the roads.

Speaker 36 Cameron was on his hands and knees. I got right in his face.
He didn't even know who who I was. Got right in Tristan's face, didn't know who I was.
They wouldn't even answer me.

Speaker 36 They were completely catatonic. It was like I wasn't even there.
I was invisible to all three of them.

Speaker 36 The only thing out was the boy's car, and they were parked side by side, like they pulled up to a grocery store,

Speaker 36 and the baby carriages out in front of, like in between them, about 20 feet in front of me.

Speaker 37 Cameron Heron drives his Ford Mustang at 102 miles an hour down a boulevard a few blocks from his house. He's racing his friend John.

Speaker 37 At that moment, a young mother and her 21-month-old daughter cross the street.

Speaker 36 I can't get him ever to him or his brother to say anything. I get him up to the accident scene right before impact and they shut down.

Speaker 37 Cameron tries to break, but it's too late.

Speaker 41 Pedestrian, bashore and hydrogen stroller hit my vehicle this was the scene along tampa's busy bayshore boulevard after mom and daughter were hit while crossing the street lily up was in her stroller now mangled the driver who allegedly hit a woman on bayshore boulevard was street racing his name is cameron heron

Speaker 36 the baby didn't die till

Speaker 36 Friday morning when you took her off life support. The mother died from what I remember

Speaker 36 I think it was a Wednesday night that evening.

Speaker 37 A mother and her baby both dead. The story leads the local news for weeks, but for the moment, it doesn't go much further than Tampa.
To be honest, that's not that surprising.

Speaker 37 Thousands of Americans die in car crashes each year. And sure, the Heron case is more newsworthy than most.

Speaker 37 You can see instantly how it can be framed: a spoiled rich kid in a fast car who kills a mother and child. But it's still a familiar story, nothing too out of the ordinary.

Speaker 37 There's little to suggest it won't die out in a month or two.

Speaker 37 Fast forward to 2021, the middle of the COVID pandemic, Cameron has pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and unlawful racing. He's sentenced to 24 years in jail.

Speaker 37 The victim's family feels like justice has been done.

Speaker 43 Although this won't bring my wife back, I hope that this sentence will inspire younger folks to behave in a manner that is appropriate.

Speaker 37 Legal guidelines in Florida suggest that Cameron should get somewhere between 18 and 30 years in prison. So by that account, 24 years is roughly in the middle.

Speaker 37 But for Cameron's dad, the sentence is devastating.

Speaker 36 Oh, I was furious. I was livid.
I wanted to just go out and, I mean, you know, wring someone's neck.

Speaker 39 And do you know what Cameron's reaction to the verdict was?

Speaker 36 He sure looked stunned to me. That's all I can tell you.
It was that look in his face.

Speaker 37 For me, I don't know what to think. On the one hand, Cameron stopped at the scene.
He didn't try and run away. He pleaded guilty, and he's always expressed remorse.

Speaker 44 I'm going to read on behalf of Cameron Heron.

Speaker 44 I am so sorry for what I did and what I caused. God is with these two beautiful souls, and I have no doubt that they are at peace.

Speaker 37 Then again, Cameron's recklessness directly led to the death of a mother and child.

Speaker 45 When I hear about listening to your child wake up with screams in the middle of the night for a few months,

Speaker 45 We're going on three years and we hear those screams. They can comfort their child.
They can go to them and hug them.

Speaker 45 I go to a closet and sniff a t-shirt.

Speaker 45 I go to a baby picture and stroke her cheeks to comfort her.

Speaker 37 I can see why people wanted him to go to jail for a long time.

Speaker 37 Not long after he's sentenced, Cameron Heron launches an appeal. His lawyers argue that he should get 10 years in prison, not 24.

Speaker 37 And it's around this time that things start to get a bit weird.

Speaker 36 I mean, he got sentenced in April of that year, and then by July 4th,

Speaker 36 so just six weeks later, it was out of control, completely out of control. People harassing us, getting our number and constantly calling us.
You know,

Speaker 36 they would start calling us at like midnight.

Speaker 36 And they'd all be overseas numbers.

Speaker 36 They just wanted to express their support for Cameron.

Speaker 36 From around the world. And I don't know if there are bots, but it went on and on and on every night.

Speaker 37 The case of Cameron Heron goes global. Thousands of people suddenly seem very interested.
Some even turn up at Chris's door.

Speaker 36 A complete stranger

Speaker 36 wanting to help us.

Speaker 36 Really? Yeah. And then the next day another one came.
And I just remember coming in and going, Cheryl, we are...

Speaker 36 Something is weird happening. I don't know what it is, but...

Speaker 37 But most of the interest is firmly rooted in social media. An army of accounts starts tweeting in support of Cameron Heron, calling for his sentence to be reduced.

Speaker 4 Justice for Cameron Heron.

Speaker 46 Cameron Heron is a man who confessed to a crime

Speaker 47 he didn't commit and put her daughter's life in danger. Wrong and oppressed.

Speaker 37 On Twitter and TikTok, on Facebook and Instagram, Cameron's story blows up.

Speaker 37 Instead of being treated like a man who's killed two people, Cameron is fated as a celebrity.

Speaker 48 Here are some of the comments. Poor boy, I hope they will forgive him.
He looks innocent. He didn't do it on purpose.

Speaker 35 Look,

Speaker 35 blue is my favorite color.

Speaker 37 May I ask why?

Speaker 35 Because when I see the ocean,

Speaker 37 the sky,

Speaker 37 and those eyes.

Speaker 37 There are broken heart emojis and images of Cameron set to the song Criminal by Britney Spears.

Speaker 37 Some online supporters say he's too cute to spend so long in jail. People even use AI to mimic his voice.

Speaker 50 I am Cameron Heron, and during my teenage years, I developed a love for cars and racing.

Speaker 37 But a lot of these posts go beyond mere support. Some are pretty vicious.
They attack the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, the prosecution team, anyone connected with the case.

Speaker 37 Most disturbingly, they even troll the family of the woman who Cameron killed.

Speaker 39 These are the jinks who destroy the life of an innocent person, accusing and slandering him because of their jealousy, hatred, and greed in their hearts. Hashtag Jessica died by suicide.

Speaker 40 That's pretty cool, right?

Speaker 39 Jessica was drunk and crossed the street illegally.

Speaker 36 So this is that Jessica was the young mother that was killed.

Speaker 39 Every unjust has an end.

Speaker 37 Skull, skull.

Speaker 39 That's from Amanda67M.

Speaker 39 Karma is coming to you, Hubbard. Who's Hubbard?

Speaker 36 His assistant DA that prosecuted Cameron.

Speaker 39 Karma is coming to you, Hubbard. You will never survive God's punishment.

Speaker 37 All the Cameron accounts accounts have one basic message, that the case is a miscarriage of justice, that Cameron didn't mean to kill anyone, that he doesn't deserve to go to prison.

Speaker 37 And the scale of the campaign is staggering. On TikTok, the hashtag Cameron Heron has 2.8 billion views.
Just for context, Justice for Johnny Depp got 20 billion views on TikTok.

Speaker 37 But Depp is a global superstar, not some unknown kid from a small city in Florida. And here's why that's really interesting.

Speaker 37 Because I don't think Cameron's case went viral by accident. I think that someone or some group made it go viral.

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Speaker 29 It's packed with everyday makeup must-haves and it's honestly too cute to wrap.

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Speaker 37 In the Depp case, I found it quite hard to tell whether some of the suspicious accounts I was seeing were bots or just really enthusiastic fans. But in Cameron's case, the bots are far more obvious.

Speaker 39 Heron Army, Cameron Heron,

Speaker 39 Cameron Coyle Coyle Heron.

Speaker 36 Well that's his middle name.

Speaker 39 Cameron Heron Official. Now that

Speaker 39 doesn't look official to me.

Speaker 37 They have generic names like Cameron Heron 16 or CamCam55.

Speaker 37 Many have almost no followers. They post hundreds of times a day and only about Cameron Heron.
Some use AI to generate fake profile photos.

Speaker 37 But the most surprising thing about these bots is that many of them seem to come from one part of the world, the Middle East.

Speaker 36 Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bahrain. I'm just the ones I remember.

Speaker 36 Saudi.

Speaker 39 Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 36 Saudi, yeah, all over. Yeah, I just told Cameron, I said, your life's going to be, it's going to be a weird life when you get out of that place.
I said, you got to go to somewhere and hide.

Speaker 36 You know, and the Middle East is not it.

Speaker 37 Chris and I scroll through some of these accounts. We find hundreds of bots tweeting in Arabic or broken English, pumping out identical messages in support of Cameron.

Speaker 37 Many have their locations set to somewhere in the region, but Chris also shows me some accounts which seem to be in two places at once.

Speaker 37 There's one account called Cameron Heron24 that tweets primarily in English. One day, it posts a message from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 37 Three minutes later, it switches location and starts tweeting from Florida. This account is pretending to be from Cameron's home state, perhaps to give the impression of local support.

Speaker 37 But it's not doing a very good job. Just like in the debt case, inauthentic accounts supporting Cameron don't operate in a silo.
And real people start to take the bait.

Speaker 37 A genuine fan club springs up in support of the convicted teenager.

Speaker 22 Please reply to me.

Speaker 47 I want to speak to you.

Speaker 37 Chris starts getting late-night phone calls, constant text messages, letters sent from around the world.

Speaker 36 A lot of it is the Middle East supporters. If I blew them off a day, they'd immediately attack me.
You know, God's going to strike you down, stuff like this. I just laugh at it.
I'm like, oh, great.

Speaker 36 In what format would they attack you? Text messages. Really?

Speaker 36 Text messages and WhatsApp? Can I ask what do they want? They want to know everything about Cameron. Anything and everything.

Speaker 37 The messages keep coming day after day after day.

Speaker 36 You can tell that's from the Middle East, the way they write it,

Speaker 36 and when they call us Mama and Daddy Heron. Really? Is that like a message? They call us that to my day.

Speaker 37 He shows me an enormous pile of fan mail.

Speaker 36 I have loved your son since the day I met him and want nothing but the best for him. God bless you and your wonderful and your beautiful family.
Please, here's my email if you'd like to talk and chat.

Speaker 36 While you don't know me and I don't know you,

Speaker 36 I felt the need to write.

Speaker 37 I asked Chris why he thinks his son's case caught fire, first on social media and then in real life.

Speaker 36 Your guess is as good as mine, Alexi, but I'm...

Speaker 36 Oh, God. I know this is going to sound vain.

Speaker 36 I think it's his eyes.

Speaker 36 It's the only thing I can come up with.

Speaker 37 To me, that's implausible. Cameron is an attractive young man, and yes, hundreds of real supporters have reached out to both him and to Chris.

Speaker 37 But that doesn't explain why literally thousands of fake accounts based in the Middle East were set up to advocate for Cameron's case.

Speaker 37 It seems obvious that someone commissioned these accounts to support him.

Speaker 46 targeting Eastern European hackers originally, and then I was targeting members of al-Qaeda.

Speaker 37 E.J. Hilbert is a former FBI agent.
He's seen plenty of disinformation campaigns, and he thinks the Heron case is a clear example.

Speaker 46 If you wanted to be high quality, it would have had to have been Florida residents talking about it in Florida. That's the only way it was going to happen.

Speaker 46 By using groups outside of Florida, immediately looked like manipulation.

Speaker 37 E.J. says that a lot of disinformation firms are based in the Middle East, in countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Speaker 37 His theory is that one of these firms was paid to support Cameron online, and he doesn't think it would have cost a lot of money.

Speaker 46 There was one instance where somebody was asking me about the exact same stuff. How did this get escalated around the world, blah, blah, blah, blah? How is it coming from everywhere?

Speaker 46 And they said, well, we talked to the individual and they said, I don't have the kind of money that it would cost to do that, to get people to do that. And I said, so they don't have $100?

Speaker 46 Because honestly, that's all it takes.

Speaker 37 For EJ, there's only one question in the Heron case. Who paid them?

Speaker 46 My first thought was somebody somewhere, probably a friend that was the same age as him, understood something, knew how to get followers, knew how to get tweets, how to get stuff like that.

Speaker 46 I don't think it was his lawyer. I don't think it was his family.
They probably didn't.

Speaker 46 Some would argue, you know, he had this super fast car. Don't tell me you don't have money to pay for this type of stuff.
Don't think of this always as nefarious manipulation.

Speaker 36 All right.

Speaker 46 Think of it as, in certain cases, people thinking that they're helping.

Speaker 37 Chris unsurprisingly insists that he had nothing to do with commissioning bots.

Speaker 39 The accusation was that

Speaker 39 you or someone in Cameron's team had paid for the bottom false.

Speaker 36 Absolutely false. Good lord.
I can barely get on my email. You kidding me? I'm going to create a bot thing?

Speaker 37 He doesn't seem to have a great grasp of social media.

Speaker 36 The only time I went on

Speaker 36 TikTok, sorry about that. Well, they would all write me as I was doing the live TikTok thing.
They'd all write me. You know, they'd write questions.

Speaker 36 I've never done ticket talk, so it was all new to me.

Speaker 37 I really need to speak to Cameron. And then, as if by magic.

Speaker 36 Your current balance is $21.82.

Speaker 36 And I have to reload it every

Speaker 36 like three days. He calls me a second.

Speaker 36 Hey, Cam.

Speaker 36 How you doing?

Speaker 36 We're

Speaker 36 well you don't sound too great. What's the problem?

Speaker 37 After a bit of to and fro, Chris passes me the phone.

Speaker 37 How are you doing?

Speaker 37 Uh I'm okay.

Speaker 37 I mean,

Speaker 37 I don't know how to really explain it. Overwhelmed would be probably the best term to use.

Speaker 37 Yeah. Yeah.
How are you doing?

Speaker 36 Yeah,

Speaker 36 we're okay. Yeah, yeah, we're okay.

Speaker 39 Our particular focus is on the social media campaign that resulted after

Speaker 39 you were sentenced.

Speaker 39 It's really kind of extraordinary. I just would be really interested to know what you thought about it.

Speaker 39 Well, I mean, at first it was

Speaker 39 cool, I guess, but then as it it progressed, it kind of evolved to its own monster. Right.
We couldn't really control it no matter what we did. And now it's just, I don't even know what to call it.

Speaker 36 Do you think it's become kind of more of a more of a burden than a help?

Speaker 36 Honestly, yeah. Yeah, I would say so.
Yeah.

Speaker 39 What do you think of the fact that so many accounts originate in the in the Middle East? What do you think is going on?

Speaker 39 I don't really know about that. You know, I thought it was odd too.

Speaker 39 Is what's happening online part of the reason why you're feeling quite overwhelmed at the moment?

Speaker 39 Yes.

Speaker 39 I think at least 90% of overwhelming factors come from online. 90% of the reason why you're feeling overwhelmed comes because of what's happening online.

Speaker 39 Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 39 Even the guards recognize me all the time. Like, hey, I just saw you on Snapchat last night or Twitter or Instagram.
And it's almost like a weekly basis.

Speaker 39 And some of them really hate me for it, and others are really kind of,

Speaker 39 I guess you could say, starstrucks. They're like, hey, you're that guy.
And I'm like, yeah,

Speaker 39 that's me, sadly. Do you think that anyone connected to you, even maybe without your knowledge, might have

Speaker 39 paid for

Speaker 39 bots or trolls to support your case,

Speaker 39 yeah, I think so. Yeah,

Speaker 39 I would agree with that. You do think so?

Speaker 39 Yeah, I do think so.

Speaker 37 Cameron thinks that someone close to him paid for Middle Eastern bots, but he doesn't have any idea who. Or if he does, he's not going to tell me over the phone.

Speaker 37 I don't want to take up any more of his time.

Speaker 39 Do you want me to pass you quickly back to your dad so that he can say goodbye?

Speaker 36 All All right, bye, honey. How much time do we got? Thank you.
Oh, love you, hon.

Speaker 39 Thank you so much, Cameron. I appreciate it.

Speaker 36 All right, if you want to call, call back.

Speaker 36 I will call back later. It'll just shut off here in a minute.
Thank you for your eating now.

Speaker 37 As Chris hangs up the phone, I can see that he looks exhausted. We've been talking for hours.
It's time for me to go. Take care.

Speaker 36 All right.

Speaker 40 All the best. See y'all.

Speaker 36 Be careful.

Speaker 37 As we walk out of Chris's house, I'm trying to think about what this all means for the Depp case.

Speaker 37 If one of Cameron's friends did buy a bunch of Middle East-based bots to support him, then that doesn't really help us much.

Speaker 37 It would mean that literally anyone close to Johnny Depp, a fan, a colleague, an agent, could have done the same thing.

Speaker 37 They would have had to spend more money for a more sophisticated campaign, but even then, the number of suspects would just be too big.

Speaker 37 But then I remembered something else that E.J. Hilbert told me.
Another theory about why a country like Saudi Arabia might take an interest in Cameron.

Speaker 46 There are those potentials that there were somebody who wanted to help Cameron and or help that situation.

Speaker 46 But more likely, when you're talking about international players and international hashtags and things of that nature, that is done by people that want to hurt the U.S.

Speaker 46 They want to showcase the failures of the U.S.

Speaker 46 That's why you would have state actors or other groups say this. This is a propaganda war.

Speaker 46 This is a manipulation of the narrative of other people, other nations.

Speaker 37 What EJ tells me is startling. That even local cases like Cameron's can be useful propaganda for authoritarian states.

Speaker 37 It works on two levels. You show your own people that Western justice is not all it's cracked up to be, and as a bonus, it creates more division in America itself.

Speaker 46 How do you destroy your enemy?

Speaker 46 How do you decrease the capabilities of an enemy? It is a rule that has been around forever. Sun Tzu talks about it.
Every major army talks about it. You divide and you conquer.

Speaker 46 The division is the goal.

Speaker 37 EJ's theory initially seemed far-fetched, but then again, we've seen this before.

Speaker 37 When Russia wanted to interfere in the 2016 US election, they created hundreds of social media profiles pretending to be angry Americans, whipping up hatred on all sorts of issues.

Speaker 37 And last year, thousands of Chinese accounts got kicked off Facebook for doing exactly the same thing.

Speaker 37 I'd always assumed that if someone had paid for bots to promote Johnny Depp, that it would be an individual, perhaps someone close to him or one of his advisors.

Speaker 37 But maybe I've been thinking about the Depp case all wrong.

Speaker 37 What if a state actor had its own interest in stoking up hate against Amber Heard?

Speaker 37 There was something Daniel Mackey told me the very first time I spoke to him.

Speaker 53 Your $5 bot, and that's your midnight special. It's your 38.
You know, you have it in an ankle holster and it'll get the job done on a Saturday night.

Speaker 53 So how much we ever heard campaign is more like a nuclear submarine. It's something that I would see a state produce.

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Speaker 37 I get back to the hotel and I start looking at some of the most prolific pro-Johnny Depp accounts. More out of curiosity than anything else, I filter the results to see if any have tweeted in Arabic.

Speaker 37 I start poring over all the hashtags, all the usernames, and then I find them. They aren't as obvious as the bots in the Heron case, but they are there.

Speaker 37 Twitter accounts, which today tweet in English about Johnny Depp. They present themselves as ordinary fan accounts, posting dozens of messages a day praising the actor and attacking Amber Amber Heard.

Speaker 37 On first glance, they seem to have started tweeting recently, but when I plug their details into the Wayback Machine, which is a site that saves historic copies of web pages, a different picture emerges.

Speaker 37 These ProDep accounts have actually deleted hundreds of tweets. All the tweets are in Arabic, not in English, and not a single one mentions Johnny Depp or any other celebrity.

Speaker 37 Instead, lots of these tweets have another purpose altogether. To praise the Saudi government and its controversial ruler, Mohammed bin Salman.

Speaker 37 Next time on Who Trolled Amber, we hone in on a perpetrator.

Speaker 37 It looks like these are totally from the flies the saudi ministry of flies accounts we learn about an unexpected friendship i think we'll be seeing johnny depp go to saudi arabia a lot over the coming years and i start looking more closely at depp's team this really rather unheard of character seems to be part of a very very very malign web of characters who played a very active role in subverting western democracies

Speaker 37 we contacted johnny depp while making this podcast, but he didn't respond. Thank you for listening to Who Trolled Amber.

Speaker 37 Who Trolled Amber is written and reported by me, Alexey Mostrus, and by Xavier Greenwood. The producer is Xavier Greenwood.
Additional reporting by Katie Riley. Sound design is by Carla Patella.

Speaker 37 The narrative editor is Gary Marshall. The editor is David Taylor.

Speaker 37 Thank you for listening to Who Trolled Amber. If you're enjoying the series, please take a moment to give it a rating and recommend it to your friends and family.
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Speaker 37 While you wait for next week's episode, search for Tortoise and hear more from our award-winning newsroom wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 37 You can binge the entire series by subscribing to Tortoise Plus or the Tortoise app.

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