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> Dr Janice Duffy successfully argued in 2015 and 2023 that Google published defamatory extracts from American website RipOff Report on its search engine page,

> Dr Janice Duffy successfully argued in 2015 and 2023 that Google published defamatory extracts from American website RipOff Report on its search engine page, despite her notifying the company and asking for the posts to be removed. Personally, I don't easily see how Google could be liable for defamation here under any reasonable standard. Their search services generally don't say the equivalent of "Bob murdered a woman in 1989". Their search services generally say the equivalent of "Joe says that Bob murdered a woman in 1989". If anybody is guilty of defamation in that contrived example, it's Joe. Regardless of whether the story about Bob murdering somebody is true or false, Google's service remains entirely factual when they pass along the word that "Joe says that Bob murdered a woman in 1989". That statement is 100% factual. I wish the article went into more detail about the actual impact on this woman's career (not sure if they risk lawsuits reporting the details), but as the posted article reads right now, it's not really clear if she was fired because of some boss Googling her, or if she just had a mental break when she fixated on the Google search results to a possibly unhealthy degree.

varjag 3y ago
The problem begins when you are Bob and anyone typing your name in the search engine gets "Bob murdered a woman in 1989", without any reference to particular Joe.
viraptor 3y ago
> Google's service remains entirely factual when they pass along the word that "Joe says that ... That's not what they do though. This is a case about autocomplete in the search bar which gave the phrase "psychic stalker" after her name without any context or source. You could expect people to know this is just a random phrase from the index, but: 1. People don't understand how Google works. 2. It doesn't change the result of the negative association for a name used in business.
GuB-42 3y ago
Defamation laws are complicated. In some countries you can be purely factual and still commit the crime of diffamation. An example is talking about someone's involvement in some criminal activity, implying the person in question is a himself a criminal when he is in fact a victim. It is true, but it is still using deceptive tactics (lying by omission in this case) to damage someone's reputation. Here, what I understood made it defamation is that Google autocompleted the defendant name to “janice duffy psychic stalker”. No "Joe says" here. Victim aside, I think it is an important case, and probably the reason why it took so long. By autocompleting, Google puts up information without context, and I think it is normal to hold the company responsible more than for regular search results. In my opinion, Google simply shouldn't autocomplete people names with accusations, true or not. Not only it opens them to defamation, like in this case, but there is enough negativity in this world that I feel like having autocomplete say bad things on people, even assholes, is doing the world a disservice.

varjag 3y ago

The problem begins when you are Bob and anyone typing your name in the search engine gets "Bob murdered a woman in 1989", without any reference to particular Joe.

viraptor 3y ago

> Google's service remains entirely factual when they pass along the word that "Joe says that ... That's not what they do though. This is a case about autocomplete in the search bar which gave the phrase "psychic stalker" after her name without any context or source. You could expect people to know this is just a random phrase from the index, but: 1. People don't understand how Google works. 2. It doesn't change the result of the negative association for a name used in business.

GuB-42 3y ago

Defamation laws are complicated. In some countries you can be purely factual and still commit the crime of diffamation. An example is talking about someone's involvement in some criminal activity, implying the person in question is a himself a criminal when he is in fact a victim. It is true, but it is still using deceptive tactics (lying by omission in this case) to damage someone's reputation. Here, what I understood made it defamation is that Google autocompleted the defendant name to “janice duffy psychic stalker”. No "Joe says" here. Victim aside, I think it is an important case, and probably the reason why it took so long. By autocompleting, Google puts up information without context, and I think it is normal to hold the company responsible more than for regular search results. In my opinion, Google simply shouldn't autocomplete people names with accusations, true or not. Not only it opens them to defamation, like in this case, but there is enough negativity in this world that I feel like having autocomplete say bad things on people, even assholes, is doing the world a disservice.