Amber Heard ‘trolled by Saudi-backed bots’ during Johnny Depp court battles
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Amber Heard was the victim of an online trolling campaign by accounts linked to Saudi Arabia, according to a new investigation.
Heard was subjected to a barrage of abusive messages during her high-profile court battles with her former husband, Johnny Depp.
According to an investigation by Tortoise Media, which examined more than one million tweets, more than 50 per cent of anti-Heard messages in the run-up to the 2022 defamation case were “inauthentic” – either from automated “bot” accounts or people hired to attack the actress.
They called her an “abuser”, a “liar” and a “traitor”, while proclaiming Depp’s innocence of domestic abuse allegations.
The Tortoise podcast, Who Trolled Amber?, alleges that a number of the accounts tweeted in Arabic and were full of praise for the Saudi regime or its ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Depp is a friend of the prince and reportedly spent more than seven weeks in Saudi Arabia last year, staying in royal palaces and camps, flying back to London on Bin Salman’s personal 747 to attend a rock concert at the Royal Albert Hall.
Bradley Hope, author of a book on Bin Salman, told the podcast that the pro-Depp tweets emanating from Saudi Arabia appear to be produced by “flies”, a name for Saudi bot accounts.
“Somehow it became known that MBS [Bin Salman] had a new fascination with Johnny Depp. Somebody gets the idea that this is the agenda and it becomes a sanctioned message to send through the flies’ channels,” Hope alleged.
An intelligence professional who tracks online disinformation campaigns, said there was only a “0.1 per cent chance” that the hate directed at Heard was from genuine Depp fans.
The investigation also claims that bot networks in Thailand and Spain tweeted large numbers of pro-Depp messages.
In one case, more than 100 Twitter accounts sent 1,000 identical messages at exactly the same time to any company that had worked with Heard, reading: “This brand supports domestic violence against men.”
Between 2016-22, more than 800,000 tweets were posted with the hashtag #AmberHeardIsAnAbuser, Tortoise said.
The makers of the podcast argue that the criticism of Heard could have affected the jury in the 2022 US defamation trial which found in favour of Depp.
Depp had lost an earlier libel trial in the UK, in which he sued the Sun newspaper for calling him a “wife beater”. Judge Mr Justice Nicol found that 12 of the 14 alleged incidents of domestic violence had occurred.
Alexi Mostrous, presenter of the podcast, said: “This case has wider ramifications than just an unedifying spat between two pampered Hollywood actors.
“This year is the biggest election year in history. Billions of people in more than 50 countries – not least America and very likely Britain – will go to the polls. It feels like democracy itself is on the ballot.
“At the same time, it’s becoming easier to pump out misinformation online… So, if you couldn’t tell the difference between a real-life Johnny Depp fan and a bot in 2022, then you probably won’t be able to tell a Russian troll from a US election official in 2024. And that represents a serious problem for the security of our democracies.”
Johnny Depp and the Saudi Embassy did not respond to Tortoise’s request for comment.
