5 ms·

> while the platform users experience basically no-liability gossip, such as empirical claims about businesses. Not true. You can be sued for Libel on Twitter

• jaredklewis 6y ago
  I think the parent comment recognizes that but is saying there is "basically" no-liability because it is so impractical to sue a random internet commenters one by one. For sure, if you are Elon Musk and you claim on your twitter account that a world renowned diver is a pedophile, you might suffer real consequences. But if someone posts on my restaurant's yelp page a totally fabricated negative review, what are my options? Even let's say I have video or other evidence that disproves their assertion (unlikely), I will need to quantity the harm that this particular internet comment did to my business, which is in most cases nearly impossible. And all for what? A median wage worker isn't going to be able to cover my lawyers fee's (assuming I can prove malicious intent) before going into bankruptcy. What businesses really want is to be able to sue Yelp itself for libel. They want to say: "Yelp, you didn't quality control your comments, these reviews are being fabricated. After my 5 star rating dropped to 1, my business’s income plummeted, now pay up." I don't think it would be a good idea if our laws worked like that, but as the parent points out, the current situation is that the platforms are more or less immune to libel, and suing random internet commenters for libel makes no sense.