Arguments on social media can be freewheeling and nasty; comments and accusations are often light on facts. The defamation suit filed last week against Elon Musk might test the limits of that rough-and-tumble.and the Rose City Nationalists, planned to protest against Pride Night events in Portland, Oregon, but wound up brawling with each other instead. In the fighting, two members of Rose City were unmasked.
If the allegations are true, this is nasty, reckless stuff, plainly harmful to Brody’s reputation – and reputation, although famously difficult to define, is what defamation law exists to protect. But social media is often a nasty and reckless forum, where insult and invention go hand in hand. For that reason, when facing allegations that someone has been defamed online, courts usually proceed with caution.
None of this should be taken to mean that a case alleging defamation on social media can’t be won; what these and many other cases do suggest is that plaintiffs will have a tough go.Which brings us back to the latest suit against Musk. The initial “very odd” tweet seems a weak reed on which to hang a defamation claim. Instead, the suit is more likely to turn on whether, after being warned by users that Brody had been misidentified, Musk indeed doubled down.
The complaint tells us that users connected this post with the earlier one, and thus reasonably took Musk to be talking about Brody, even after the avalanche of evidence that he wasn’t the extremist in the photograph. That potentially makes Musk’s challenge greater. It’s one thing to make an accusation in the heat of the moment; it’s something else to repeat it when faced with overwhelming evidence of falsity.