After Depp, Heard verdict, Me Too founder says movement can’t be stopped

On Wednesday, a jury of five men and two women dealt a victory to Depp in his defamation case against Heard, his ex-wife. Heard, for her part, prevailed in part of her counterclaim against Depp. Depp charged that Heard had falsely and maliciously accused him of domestic abuse, costing him millions in damages from lost acting jobs after an opinion piece attributed to Heard was published by The Washington Post in 2018. While the piece didn’t name Depp directly, Heard described herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”

The verdict rapidly made its way across social media platforms, with some conservative pundits such as Ann Coulter and Meghan McCain declaring the death of #MeToo. (McCain’s tweet, which read: “#MeToo is dead. Helluva job @ACLU” has since been deleted; the ACLU wrote a draft of the opinion piece and helped place it. Heard is an ambassador for the organization.)

How the trial played out on social media alarmed experts.

“It’s not just that the extremely serious issue of domestic violence was turned into a lurid spectacle on social media, but also that mainstream media and public discourse so thoroughly bought into the misogynist narrative that obscured the underlying – and straightforward – legal issues,” Mary Anne Franks of University of Miami’s School of Law told CNN Business on Wednesday after the verdict.

It “is women’s speech that has been most feared, and thus extensively regulated, criticized, and prohibited throughout American history,” she wrote in 2019, adding that “a mass movement of women speaking out about experiences and abuses that have long been suppressed, such as the #MeToo movement, should be praised as the quintessential exercise of free speech. ”

The Depp v. Heard trial, she said Wednesday, essentially boiled down to “a digital-age witch trial,” noting the intent was “to roll back the minor progress made by the #MeToo movement.”

The pro-Depp fervor was particularly evident on TikTok. Shortly before the verdict was read, the #JusticeForJohnnyDepp hashtag had garnered 18.8 billion views, while #JusticeForAmberHeard had amassed just 68.2 million.

“It’s a massive celebration on TikTok right now for Johnny Depp,” Ashley Roberts, a TikTok user who previously found herself in the crosshairs of pro-Depp supporters and men’s rights activists for expressing a differing viewpoint, told CNN Business Wednesday evening.

“It wasn’t a total absolute loss for her,” added Roberts, referring to Heard winning part of her counterclaim, a fact that she said isn’t acknowledged in many celebratory posts.