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Probably not. The average person doesn't have the money to fund a lawsuit, and the average defendant doesn't have the money to pay a judgement, so it's hard to
by bragr 4y ago
Probably not. The average person doesn't have the money to fund a lawsuit, and the average defendant doesn't have the money to pay a judgement, so it's hard to see how you scale it up beyond onesie twosies lawsuits. Also the people that have that kind of money generally have lawyers already so don't need those services. And finally I just don't see from a PR perspective, social media companies evicting families from their houses so the house can be sold at auction to fund a judgement because one person said something mean about another on the platform.
- pfdietz 4y agoIt would be the libel/slander equivalent of copyright trolling. That works by just legally extorting a few thousand dollars per target, under the threat of much larger penalties if they are forced to go to court.
- bragr 4y agoThere's no copyright equivalent of a SLAPP motion, so things would likely go very different than copyright trolling and result in your being held liable for a lot of defendants attorney fees. That's before even considering that anyone claiming they've been defamed would likely qualify as a public figure, or limit-public figure, so the bar would be very high.
- pfdietz 4y agoDefeating a SLAPP motion is not hard, if you actually have anything resembling a case. So the question is: how common are actually libelous statements on social media? I suspect they are quite common. Would most targets qualify as public figures? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Remember, the point of this is not to quash public criticism of the powerful, it's to extract money. There is no need for the purported victim to be a public figure.
- wmf 4y agoI had the same idea. If you get attacked by a social media mob of 100 people, hit back and demand, say, $10K from each person. Some people would pay to avoid being unmasked.