More than you'd like to know about Zoombombing

"All it takes is a few people to ruin it for everybody."

Note: while I am not quoting any of the awful comments of the Zoombombers, you might still find this content disturbing.

Due to a recent rash of antisemitic and white supremacist Zoombombings, the suspension of Zoom access to city council meetings in favor of in-person-only meetings is once again on the agenda for the April 16 Sebastopol City Council meeting. Sadly, this is a statewide—even nationwide—problem, so we thought we'd take a broader look at the issue to discover who's doing it, what other cities have done to stop it, and the broader implications for the democratic process.

With Covid Came Zoom

Zoom followed Covid, becoming even more widespread in its impact on our lives. At the beginning of Covid as schools began to use Zoom for remote classes, Zoombombing became a thing. Basically it was someone crashing a Zoom session, usually an uninvited prankster. The name Zoombombing comes from “photobombing,” which is when someone sneaks into a picture as it’s being taken.

To disrupt classes, the zoombombers would find the Zoom meeting information on social media or other online sources and simply log into the meeting and do something like play really loud music. Or insult women or people of color with terrible images or comments. This wave of Zoombombing was eventually halted by taking a few precautions, such as requiring users to register, not sending open invitations in public, and otherwise more effectively moderating the meeting. (All the guides to preventing Zoombombing are from this period in 2020-2021.) The organizers of private Zoom meetings were advised to limit Zoom use to users they know.

In the last nine months or so, Zoombombing has come back in a big way, organized by far-right groups and targeting the public comment period during open government meetings. This article looks at Zoombombing especially in California, although Zoombombing is happening all across the U.S.

Can’t Stop Zoombombing

The practical solutions that stopped Zoombombing in the first wave do not work in public meetings for two reasons: the meetings and the information about them have to be public; and the participants have a First Amendment right to comment, even if the comments are offensive. There are no real technical solutions, either.

In California, the Brown Act protects the public’s right to public comment, but it was amended in 2022 to give an official presiding over a meeting the authority to remove anyone who is being disruptive without fearing legal action. Sebastopol Mayor Diana Rich, who found herself at March 19 City Council removing one Zoombomber after the next, said: “It is a fine line between free speech and disruptive behavior.” When commenters cross that line, they might be muted and receive a warning or they are dropped from the Zoom call.

In Sebastopol City Council meetings, the times for public comment are 20 minutes at the beginning and the end of the meeting. Zoombombing, which has usually occurred in the first session of public comment, has made those 20 minutes hell for Mayor Rich, members of the city council, as well as others listening to the meeting in person or online. Zoombombing callers have disrupted numerous Sebastopol City Council meeting since early December.

In a public letter, Mayor Rich said that the City Council experienced “a truly ugly Zoom bombing” on March 19, and she was seeking advice on what action to take.

“The Zoom bombers presented as a coordinated group. They did their best to use our meeting as a platform to deliver racist, hateful, derogatory statements. The entire experience was unsettling and emotionally draining, but most importantly, it was disruptive.”

To Continue or Discontinue Commenting Via Zoom

Sebastopol is not alone. Over 55 cities in California had their public meetings disrupted by Zoombombing in the fall of 2023, and there have been even more in the first three months of 2024. Zoombombing has prompted cities to consider whether to discontinue use of Zoom for public comment, as the Brown Act does not say anything about commenting remotely.

By one source, 15 cities in California have discontinued use of Zoom for public comments, including the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, as well as city councils in Santa Rosa, Sacramento, Windsor and Walnut Creek. Fifteen cities are continuing to use Zoom, including the city councils in Sonoma, Vallejo, San Mateo and Sunnyvale. Others like Sebastopol are still deciding how to respond.

In Crescent City, the City Council voted 3-2 to suspend public comment via Zoom after a March 4 Zoombombing incident. Councilor Isaiah Wright, who is Black, explained his rationale for eliminating commenting via Zoom:

“It’s funny, as soon as the first person said something [I’m thinking], ‘OK, we’re going to be sitting here for 20 minutes dealing with a bunch of idiots,’” he told his colleagues. “It’s just not Del Norte at all. I love this place we live in and I’ve never had any issues even remotely close to any of these things. I had them when I lived in LA, but not once up here. I love this community, and I think it’s unfortunate, but I think we do personally need to get rid of Zoom.” (Wild Rivers Outpost)

The hitch is Zoom allows more people to participate in public meetings, especially those who cannot easily leave home, such as the disabled. Walnut Creek Councilmember Kevin Wilk was quoted in California City News saying:

Online platforms like Zoom “are great tools of communication that we didn’t have 20 years ago. But unfortunately, we also have a segment of the population that will use that for hateful or nefarious means. All it takes is a few people to ruin it for everybody.

In an excellent article by Christopher Neely on Lookout Santa Cruz, “‘Zoom bombing’ tests the boundaries of free speech and access in local government meetings,” Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley, a longtime public servant, said that he won’t support shutting down public comments via Zoom just “because a couple jackasses want to ruin it for everybody.”

The Zoombombers Are Out in Force

These jackasses are herd animals. As Mayor Rich pointed out, the Zoombombers are organizing online from outside the areas where the meetings are held. Most of the city council members such as Councilor Wright recognize that Zoombombers are wasting their time because they aren’t their constituents, the people they were elected to serve.

Perpetrators of Zoombombing incidents are exploiting anonymity and use fake, often offensive names and profiles to join meetings, sometimes using AI-generated voices to impersonate legitimate individuals. At a Berkeley City Council meeting, a commenter claimed to be Gabe Stutman of the Jewish News of Northern California and then proceeded to spew antisemitic, racist slurs. In another meeting, someone did the same after claiming to be the head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which has been tracking an increase in antisemitic harassment and trolling efforts in the US.

Phil Barber, a reporter for the Press Democrat, tracked down one of the leaders behind Zoombombing. This former Petaluma resident, who has since moved to Florida, set up the Goyim Defense League (GDL), mocking the ADL and operating a livestream service. (Barber was impersonated in a Novato City Council meeting, as described in “Alt-Right Wackadoodles Now Impersonating the NorCal Journalists Who Exposed Their ‘Zoom-Bombing’ of City Meetings” in SFist.)

In doing my research, I came across an oddly named “City Council Death Squads” episode from February 13, 2024 from the “It Could Happen Here” podcast. Host Molly Conger, who is from Charlottesville, VA, mentions the man that Phil Barber identified as the head of the GDL and then discussed “a little project some GDL members have going on the side called the City Council Death Squad.” (CCDS)

“Now, if you're a city council meeting enthusiast, like myself, you may already be aware of the rash of racist Zoom bombings disrupting meetings around the country over the last nine months or so.”

…

“So [Zoom has] been a boon for local democracy, but it's also created a unique opportunity for people who want to ruin that. So last year, Scotty Big Balls, Mr. Big Balls, the online pseudonym for a self-described Nazi named Harley Ray Patero Jr. started a group he calls the City Council Death Squad.

The group organizes online to find government meetings, mainly city and county council meetings all over the country, that allow public comment via Zoom. Then it coordinates those members to sign up for speaking slots, crowding out actual community members who are trying to speak on actual matters of local concern. And when the members of the group get through, the calls follow a couple of predictable paths.”

From It Could Happen Here: City Council Death Squads, Feb 13, 2024

Let me point out that I recognized the name “Molly Conger” as one of the names that CCDS Zoombombers had used as a fake name in public meeting.

Searching for City Council Death Squads, I found them on Gab, a far-right social media platform. One might think of the CCDS like a cult or an underground activist club. Each week they go out and remotely visit City Council meetings, wait through all the things that make these meetings move at a slow pace, in anticipation of their moment to jump in. They have a prepared and practiced a script, which is one of the paths that Conger referenced above, and if they don’t have time to deliver all of it, they just start throwing out slurs and profanity until they are muted. They record themselves doing it.

Later, the members of this cult or club gather back together in their online lair after someone has organized video clips from their recent Zoombombings. They launch a livestream of their Zoombombing highlights and glory over their exploits, commenting on their own superior efforts and the inadequate response of their inferiors. It was chilling to watch.

“We’re in 40 meetings a week,” one of them bragged. They complained about having to sit through City Council meetings and waiting their turn, and sometimes they weren’t able to get on and speak at all. How frustrating. They complained about boomers, the “silver haired grifters who were in power.” They talked about how each of their members were getting better with more practice and that one of them did a pretty good job for a first-time Zoombomber.

Soon I was jumping ahead in the video. Sebastopol was mentioned, along with other cities. I popped ahead a little further, going past the two-hour mark. I found myself watching their video of the Zoombombing of the March 19 Sebastopol City Council meeting. The Zoombomber used the word “fart,” and Mayor Rich gave him a warning. That’s where I heard her say: “It’s a fine line between free speech and disruptive behavior.” She gave the commenter a warning and allowed him to come back off mute, but the first word out of his mouth was “fart” so he was removed.

The dark chorus complained that the word “fart” should not get a person removed, sounding like a group of teens who had been reprimanded by a substitute teacher. The most commonly repeated phrase among the livestreamers on the video was “white f****** power,” a kind of salute.

Here’s a screenshot from that video and yes, that’s Hitler in the bottom lefthand corner.

In this livestream, one of them said that if city councils discontinue use of Zoom for calls: “Maybe next time they won’t show up on Zoom; maybe they will show up in person.” That indeed is their threat, although it will be much harder to do 40 meetings a week in person. Nonetheless, they consider it a victory if a city council decides to discontinue comments via Zoom.

They made real on their threat in Walnut Creek earlier this year. The City Council voted to stop allowing public comment via Zoom in October 2023. In February 2024, the purported leader of the City Council Death Squad showed up in person wearing a Nazi t-shirt, dark hat and glasses, and spoke during public comment in an increasingly shaky voice.

SFist reports on his hijacking of the meeting:

The commenter who identifies himself as “Scotty” points directly at (Councilmember) Wilk saying, “I’m here today because people like you think we’re scared to show up and show our face.” Yet this fellow’s face is obscured by sunglasses he is wearing indoors for a 6 pm meeting.

His antisemitic rant wasted three minutes and he talked of legal action because the council discontinued public commenting via Zoom. He ends defiantly by saying “white f****** power” twice. I’ll not show his picture here.

Wilk, who had previously been Walnut Creek’s first Jewish mayor and is now a city councilmember, was the first to respond.

"We live in a free country, and there is free speech, and that means we have to listen to awful and heinous comments like we listened to," Wilk said at Tuesday night’s meeting. "And I would like to apologize on behalf of the city council and anybody who had to hear that horrible, horrible speech." (SFist)

Disrupting Democratic Process

My initial thoughts were that Zoombombers were trolls, malicious and vulgar and an unfortunate part of the ecosystem — a nuisance, a pest. But what if there’s more to their agenda than finding opportunities to spout hate speech?

In her podcast episode, Molly Conger presses it further, calling this kind of Zoombombing a deliberate tactic to disrupt the democratic process.

“I know there's been other people who have been talking about and pointing out these instances of GDL Zoombombing and shutting down these meetings, but there certainly has been less discussion of this being a deliberate tactic that GDL is doing specifically to actually shut down the democratic process. It has been so focused on the trolling and the spreading of anti-Semitic rhetoric, which are big problems. But I think there's been a little bit less of a focus on actually looking at this as a deliberate tactic being employed to remove people's ability to engage democratically in the city or school board or wherever they live.”

From It Could Happen Here: City Council Death Squads, Feb 13, 2024

When does Zoombombing move from activism to terrorism? When does systematic hijacking of public meetings become criminal? What if we allow such forms of intimidation to wear down public servants and engaged citizens alike? What if Zoombombers use hate speech not just to assault our ears but overpower our voices? "They are using our hard-fought right to free speech against us,” said Mayor Rich via email. “It's appalling."