HBO Boss Responds To Report That He Trolled Critics With Fake Twitter Accounts, Cops To 'Very, Very Dumb Idea'

HBO CEO and Chairman Casey Bloys has responded to a news story detailing his role in the deploying of a "secret army" to deride TV critics on social media.

"For those of you who know me, you know that I am a programming executive who's very, very passionate about the shows we decide to do and the people who do them and the people who work on them," Bloys began on Thursday morning at a press event to overview HBO and Max programming on tap for 2024. "I want the shows to be great. I want people to love them. I want you all to love them. It's very important to me what you think of all the shows. So when you think of that mindset, and then think of 2020 and 2021 — I'm home, working from home, spending an unhealthy amount of time scrolling through Twitter, and I come up with a very, very dumb idea to vent my frustration."

Our sister site Rolling Stone had reported that Bloys back in June 2020 recruited Kathleen McCaffrey, HBO's SVP of drama programming, to find a "mole" at "arm's length" from the executive team to call out, on social media, select critics who panned the cabler's fare.

All told, Rolling Stone tallied six instances (between June 2020 and April 2021) where this "secret army" of Bloys' targeted TV critics on Twitter (now known as X), as well as responded to commenters on articles about HBO programming.

"Obviously, six tweets over a year and a half is not very effective, but I do apologize to the people who were mentioned in the leaked emails and texts," Bloys continued. "Obviously, nobody wants to be part of a story that they had nothing to do with. But as many of you know, I have progressed over the past couple of years to using [direct messages]. So now, when I take issue with something in a review or take issue with something I see, I've DMed many of you, and many of you are gracious enough to engage with me in a back-and-forth. And I think that is probably a much healthier way to go about this."

This "secret army" campaign came to light via text messages submitted as part of a wrongful-termination lawsuit filed in July by a former HBO staffer who alleged he was "harassed and faced retaliation" after disclosing a mental health diagnosis. The claimant also alleges he was asked to "perform menial tasks not related to his work duties" — including the aforementioned creation of fake online accounts to call out critics. (An HBO spokesperson had told Rolling Stone it would not "comment on select exchanges between programmers and errant tweets.")