Joshua Ryne Goldberg

Joshua Ryne Goldberg (born May 14, 1995) is an American internet troll convicted of attempting a bombing on the 14th anniversary of the September 11 attacks while posing as an Islamic terrorist affiliated with ISIS.

Goldberg first received law-enforcement and media attention under his Twitter handle "Australi Witness" following the Curtis Culwell Center attack, a terrorist attack on a Garland, Texas exhibit featuring images of Muhammad in May 2015, in which two assailants died in a shootout with police. The "Australi Witness" persona had, posing as a Perth jihadist, called for an attack on, and posted maps of, the center where the exhibit was taking place. "Australi Witness" was retweeted by one of the assailants before the attack, and praised the jihadist attackers in its aftermath. Goldberg claimed credit for the attack; he also allegedly planned terrorist attacks in Australia.

Goldberg had many online identities and spent "huge amounts" of time on the internet. In addition to his accounts that purported to be Islamic terrorism supporters, he made thousands of troll posts under different aliases advocating for liberal feminism, neo-Nazism, and other ideologies. In a 2019 self-published article on Medium, Goldberg admitted to having operated at least 27 different accounts on Reddit alone and many more on other websites, with false online identities on all sides of the ideological spectrum.