Call Me Stormy

Arrested For A Meme

As if we haven’t had enough chaos on social media, news is surfacing that an “influencer” on Twitter has been arrested for a meme he created in the U.S. So are these charges bogus under the protection of the 1st Amendment or did he cross the line?

Douglas Massey, aka Douglas Mackey and Ricky Vaughn, has officially been arrested for memes he prepared in the context of the 2016 Presidential election on the basis that they interfered with the election process. Twitter subsequently suspended Mackey’s account, which had 58,000 followers, in addition to two more that he attempted create under different aliases. The complaint and affidavit in support of an arrest warrant only took issue with the memes where Massey was telling people to vote by text on social media on unlawful and invalid manners that would disenfranchise people of the right to vote if they would have voted that way.

Says Viva Frei’s David Freiheit, “The case really does highlight the distinction between free speech and protected speech. I’m an unapologetic believer in freedom of speech, but I do draw the line at certain types of speech, such as targeted harassment, death threats, doxing, etc.” Here’s more from Freitheit as he analyzes the complaint, with some help from colleague Nate the Lawyer.