Douglass Mackey was accused of disseminating memes that made Hillary Clinton supporters believe they could vote via text message in 2016.

Mackey was arrested and charged on Wednesday with spreading disinformation online that misled Democratic voters in 2016 into voting by phone instead of going to the polls.

His campaign to misguide voters began after the group witnessed a similar campaign to deceive voters in the 2016 British referendum.

Why Was Douglas Mackey Arrested? Misleading Info On Memes Of Election

Federal prosecutors charged Douglass Mackey with conspiring with others to spread memes on Twitter, falsely claiming that Hillary Clinton supporters could vote by texting a specific phone number.

Prosecutors claimed that due to the misinformation campaign, at least 4,900 different phone numbers texted the number in a futile attempt to vote for Mrs. Clinton.

The accused was arrested on Wednesday morning in West Palm Beach, Fla., in what appeared to be the country’s first criminal case involving voter suppression through the spread of disinformation on Twitter.

“With Douglass’s arrest, we serve notice that those who would subvert the democratic process in this manner cannot hide behind the cloak of internet anonymity to avoid accountability for their crimes,” said Seth DuCharme.

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Is Douglas Mackey Still In Jail? His Wikipedia Bio

Douglass Mackey’s wife’s name was not mentioned in the complaint, but a person familiar with the matter confirmed that she was the presidential contender described in the charging documents.

His lawyer refused to comment. Douglass, released from jail on a $50,000 bond on Wednesday, was facing an unconventional charge. The maximum sentence for the charge is ten years in prison.

The case tested the novel use of federal civil rights laws as a tool for holding people accountable for misinformation campaigns aimed at interfering with elections, a problem that has recently become a top priority for social media platforms and law enforcement officials to address.

To police users like Mackey, who prosecutors said would open new Twitter accounts after his old ones were suspended, it’s become a game of whack-a-mole. According to the complaint, He used four different Twitter accounts between 2014 and 2018, always attempting to conceal his true identity from the public.

Douglass is a Vermont native and Middlebury College graduate. According to a company representative, he worked as an economist for John Dunham & Associates for five years until his termination in the summer of 2016.

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Where Is Douglas Mackey Now?

Douglass Mackey remained unidentified until The Huffington Post exposed him in 2018. According to MIT’s Media Lab, his alias was ranked 107 among the top 150 influencers of the 2016 election.

According to prosecutors, the goal of Mackey’s campaign was to persuade people to vote in a “legally invalid” manner.

According to the complaint, Douglass tweeted less than a week before Election Day, “Obviously, we can win Pennsylvania.” The key is to increase non-college white turnout while decreasing black turnout.”

Twitter began removing images with false information around that time and suspended his account. However, prosecutors claimed that the memes had already taken on a life of their own as Mackey’s associates continued to share them with a broader audience.

There are currently no details about Douglass’s work or what he is doing, but he appears to be living a happy life with his family.

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