A new report out of Rolling Stone claims fake accounts were a major part of the Snyder Cut’ Justice League social media campaign.
According to Rolling Stone, WarnerMedia commissioned two studies that looked at the #releasetheSnydercut social media campaign. One study found that “at least 13% of the accounts” involved were fake. Twitter itself estimated that 5% of accounts were fake, making this a disproportionate amount.
The reports were allegedly commissioned following an Instagram post by user @danirasilust, which depicted a decapitated head of Geoff Johns, Walter Hamada, and Toby Emmerich. These three men were considered enemies of Zack Snyder by his fans, and the image quickly spread online. Concerned about employees’ safety, WarnerMedia reportedly hired a third party security firm to investigate the online behaviour around Justice League.
Rolling Stone details that it had accessed a report, from April 2021, that includes the following conclusion: “After researching online conversations about the Snyder Cut of the Justice League‘s release, specifically the hashtags ‘ReleaseTheSnyderCut’ and ‘RestoreTheSnyderVerse’ on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, [the analysts] detected an increase in negative activity created by both real and fake authors. Additionally, three main leaders were identified within the authors scanned on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram — one leader on each platform. These leaders received the highest amount of engagement and have many followers, which gives them the ability to influence public opinion.”
“Just look at the drop: [That hashtag was] trending at a million tweets a day for when they wanted to release the Snyder Cut. And it dropped down to 40,000 within days,” one digital marketing executive told Rolling Stone. “You don’t see a drop like that organically.” Instead, the executive says, it appears to be a classic example of “weaponizing a movement.”
Not everyone Rolling Stone talked to believe the fake accounts were pivotal to the Snyder Cut campaign’s success: “The bulk of this activity was made up of real and passionate users taking direction from influential figures in the pro-Snyder community,” a data analyst at Graphika, Avneesh Chandra explained. “We regularly see these types of adversarial social media campaigns that are driven by real people coordinating online.”
Even with the Zack Snyder Cut of Justice League released back in 2021, the social media movement still continues, now calling for Warner Media to restore the ‘Snyderverse’, although there is no sign that will be taking place. With films like The Batman doing very well at the box office, and The Flash now delayed, there is no sign this sort of campaign will work a second time.
