I firmly believe you are mistaken as to the meaning of the word defamation, to quote a dictionary (emphasis added) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/de

I firmly believe you are mistaken as to the meaning of the word defamation, to quote a dictionary (emphasis added) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/defamation https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/defamation > the act of communicating false statements about a person that injure the reputation of that person True statements are not defamatory as a matter of the meaning of the word in common language. Calling out bad actors is not a "cheap shot", it's a useful social service. On HN we should demand better sources that do not come from known bad actors. A cheap shot would be some sort of unfair attack on his character, e.g. calling out random cases where he called the outcome wrong (which inevitably happens if you comment on enough cases). If you want to read well written and thorough criticisms of some of his older posts, you can, for example, pull up old groklaw posts about them (which did take the time to disassemble the arguments step by step and criticize them).