No Section 230 Has Nothing To Do With Horrific NY Times Story Of Online Stalker Getting Revenge For Decades' Old Slight
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210201/23193246164/no-section-230-has-nothing-to-do-with-horrific-ny-times-story-online-stalker-getting-revenge-decades-old-slight.shtml
If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend Kash Hill's incredible NY Times story about a clearly disturbed individual, who admits to "suffering from severe mental health illnesses," who filled the web with horribly defamatory information about a random guy and everyone in his family. It turned out that the reason appeared to be that nearly 30 years ago, the guy's father had fired the woman from her job in a real estate office. The story is all too familiar to anyone who has experienced harassment online. One of the tactics used was posting completely made up information on a variety of "gripe sites," many of which do very little moderation, or will only take down information if you pay. These sites often fill up with garbage, and certain people have learned to abuse those sites. Indeed, there seem to be a few people who regularly attack everyone they feel has wronged them using such sites.
The article focuses mainly on Ripoff Report, a site we've written about many times in the past, in part because of its various court cases that have often created good Section 230 law. That's not to say Ripoff Report is a good player in the space. Other stories have revealed some highly questionable behavior and the company's position regarding how it handles content moderation is one that I think is short sighted and extremely unhelpful. There are, also, other sites in the space with a wide variety of policies, some much better than Ripoff Report, some much worse.