Word-of-mouth advertising still drives lots of business, even as more and more people do their speaking online. However, when someone disparages your business on social media, their words can do far more damage because they can last forever. If their claims amount to libel and internet defamation, though, they can be challenged and removed.
The lawyers at the Katz Law Group strive to help you protect your business from defamatory conduct on the internet.
The Double-Edged Sword of Social Media for Marketing Your Business
Social media has become an essential tool for many businesses to market themselves. There are plenty of social media sites that let business create pages and allow other individuals to post content. Some of the most popular are:
- X (formerly Twitter)
- YouTube
- Snapchat
- Yelp
- TikTok
- Bluesky
Each one of these sites provides a unique opportunity for a business to show why customers should come to their store or buy their goods or services. Some companies and brands have used social media platforms to amass huge followings and interact with customers in ways that were not possible, even a decade ago.
However, that interaction is a two-way street. Dissatisfied customers, people with a grudge against a particular business, or even competing businesses can use social media to spread rumors and unsubstantiated opinions about a company, often in the comments section of the business' own posts. Because social media sites are built to let users post their own content, these disparaging comments are not vetted: They can be outright lies and still be published, read, and shared widely.
Removing Content from Social Media Sites is Tricky
One of the hallmarks of nearly all social media platforms is that anyone can create an account and a profile through which they post content. Those profiles, though, provide a layer of anonymity for the user. Breaking that shield of anonymity can be difficult on some sites, especially those that value the purported privacy of their userbase over the legitimate concerns of businesses who are trying to stamp out incorrect information about their products and services.
Holding the social media platform accountable for the libelous content that has been posted on its site is difficult, too. Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act protects social media companies from liability for content posted by their users, effectively shielding the platform from repercussions caused by their users.
Protecting Your Brand, Both Inside and Outside the Courtroom
While defamatory content that has been posted on social media presents legal obstacles for its removal, that does not mean that it cannot be done.
The internet defamation lawyers at the Katz Law Group have found ways of discovering the true identity of social media users who have posted libelous content from their online profiles – something that is not always easy, especially when the user created the account specifically for the purpose of spreading lies about a business. There are also exceptions to the legal protections that many social media companies have when it comes to their users' content and defamatory posts.
In many cases, the inaccurate and defamatory content can be removed with a thorough investigation and a cease and desist letter. The seriousness of a cease and desist letter can make the defaming party reconsider whether it is worth leaving their words online. In many cases, they will fold under this pressure and the realization that there can be legal consequences for their lies.
In some cases, though, a lawsuit is necessary to prove that the content:
- Presented a false statement as fact,
- Was at least negligently published, and
- Caused your business damage or harm, including financially.
Pursuing these legal actions can be necessary to protect your company's brand.
Reporting Defamatory Posts to the Social Media Platform
A common recourse to take – at any point in the process, from before sending the cease and desist letter to even after the defamation lawsuit has been filed – is to ask the social media platform to remove the defamatory post. Each social media platform has its own rules of conduct that its users agree to abide by in order to use the service. Violating those rules can lead to the removal of the offending content by the platform and potentially other sanctions against the user, up to and including account termination.
By reporting posts that violate the terms of use to the platform, you can convince the social media company to enforce its rules and remove the content that is hurting your business' reputation.
This avenue requires a close reading of the social media platform's content rules and terms of use, as well as a well-documented argument that the defamatory post violates those rules. Simply reporting the post and saying “this is defamatory” is rarely going to get results. Instead, you will need to go through the platform's specific process for reporting posts that violate its rules, point to the specific post that defames your business, point to the specific rule that it violates, and explain exactly why that post violates that rule.
This is often more difficult than it sounds. Worse, if the platform investigates the post and decides that it does not violate any of its rules for content, you may be left with no recourse or with an appeals process that rarely overturns the original decision to leave the content online.
Many people and business owners who take this path on their own describe the process as absurd: The few content moderators that social media platforms still employ often have to make decisions in a matter of seconds in order to keep up with the flow of complaints being made. Effective complaints for removal do not just have to be well-documented, they also have to be as brief as possible – two goals that are at odds with each other. This has only gotten worse as many social media companies have let go of even more moderators to pursue their attitudes towards Free Speech, often replacing them with artificial intelligence programs.
Massachusetts Internet Defamation Attorneys at the Katz Law Group
Acting quickly after discovering defamatory statements about your business on social media is essential. Leaving them up can continue to cause harm over the long term.
Call the Katz Law Group at (508) 480-8202 or contact them online.
