As Amber Heard’s cross-examination resumes on Tuesday in her ex-husband Johnny Depp’s defamation trial, there are no shortages of viral clips of the ongoing trial online. The latest clip to make the social media rounds is one that was uploaded to the subreddit r/PublicFreakout where one Reddit user claims Heard lied about photo evidence that her team submitted.
Reddit user u/National_External9344 uploaded the video on Tuesday where it has already gained more than 1,000 upvotes as of writing. The video shows a clip of Depp’s lawyer Camille Vasquez interrogating Heard about a set of two photos showing alleged bruising on Heard’s face. The lawyer asks for the photos to be pulled up side-by-side and asks Heard whether both photos were taken the same day, May 21, 2016.
“You testified yesterday that the only difference between these two photographs was that the light was turned on,” Vasquez asks.
“That’s what it appears to be, yes,” Heard replies.
When Vasquez mentions that the lights are on in both photos, Heard clarifies one photo appears to be lit by a set of makeup vanity lights while the other does not.
“Isn’t it true you just edited these photographs?” Vasquez says.
“No, I’ve never edited a photograph,” Heard replies.
“Didn’t you just enhance the saturation from one of these photos to make your face look more red?”
“No, that’s incorrect I didn’t touch it,” Heard responds.
It is at this point in the video that the Reddit user adds their own photo editing analysis. The user compares both photos by overlapping one over the other to imply the photos are identical. They toggle back and forth between both photos before enhancing the saturation on one of them. He compares them one last time before ending the video with a clip of Vasquez embracing Depp.
It’s unclear what photo-editing app the redditor used or what experience they have with photo editing, but this isn’t the first time Reddit users have sided with the Pirates of the Caribbean star. According to a Polygon article, fans of the DC Cinematic universe petitioned for Heard to be removed from movies like Justice League and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom after Depp filed the lawsuit in 2019. They also gained a reputation for being toxic, after mobilizing across the web to pressure Warner Bros. into releasing Zack Snyder’s cut of the Justice League. According to Polygon writer Ryan Broderick, the move on Warner Bros. part legitimizes online harassment.
Redditors are also often referred to as “armchair experts,” a term referring to people who claim to know considerable knowledge on a subject than they actually do. The social news aggregation website has also often been at the forefront of different controversies. In fact, the website’s Wikipedia page has a section on just Controversies, a subsection that goes back as far as 2010. Most notably, in 2021 Reddit banned the subreddit group r/DonaldTrump for “inciting violence” in relation to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
The Daily Dot has reached out to the redditor via Reddit direct message for this story.
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