This sort of happened to me once. I was one of the first to identify children's fiction author Robert Stanek as both a terrible writer and an Amazon astroturfer. My blog post about him was widely cited by other critics as they discovered the same things. Eventually this led to posts on a couple of his "fan" sites - almost certainly set up and most content written by Stanek himself - including my home address and accusations that I'm a child molester. He also tried sending me emails threatening legal action. Besides the claims being utterly fraudulent, the letters were so clearly fake that I replied telling him to piss off (in exactly so many words). With a little effort I succeeded in having the posts taken down, or at least made invisible to Google. The more generic attacks continued on and off for years, again as more people discovered the now-numerous accounts of his transgressions and re-triggered Stanek's delusions about a cabal, but it has been at least a couple of years since the last one. Who knows, maybe he'll try again now.
The point is that these kinds of revenge campaigns have been easy for a long time (my blog post was in 2003) and keep getting easier. Using Pinterest in this case seems like an interesting twist, since Google's suspicious love for them is already a matter of some discussion. It's also interesting that an NYT reporter takes a so-predictable swipe at Section 230 as part of the story. While I wouldn't be in favor of holding platform providers responsible for users' content, I do think defamation deserves to be treated with at least the same seriousness as copyright violation, for which special provisions already exist.
P.S. I'm well aware that Stanek accuses me of being the defamer. Such reciprocal accusations are practically always a feature of these cases, including OP, and that should be kept in mind when considering them.
Assuming your statements are true, username checks out.
How did you go about getting the posts taken down/made invisible? I have yet to tick someone off enough for them to try something like this, but knowing myself it'll probably happen someday.
> Assuming your statements are true, username checks out.
Heh. Thanks for the chuckle.
> How did you go about getting the posts taken down/made invisible?
I made my own legal threats, basically. One site was a ProBoards forum, so I contacted them. I didn't pretend to be a lawyer or anything, just told them I'd get one if needed. I never received any acknowledgement, but the posts did disappear from view. I think they were made private, not deleted. Good enough as far as I was concerned. The other site was kind of a cross between Wikipedia and Quora. In that case I found the site owner and sent a similar email. That time I did get a quite-reasonable response, and the article was taken down.
I haven't been involved in a lot of legal stuff, on either side, but enough to know how it works and not fear the process. Once someone realizes that you have the resources and determination to drag them into actual court, they tend to think pretty hard about what persisting might cost them - in this case possibly in terms of reputation even more than money. No surprise that he/they folded quickly.
Statute of limitations is 1 year, I was unaware for longer than that. The Internet means it’s without limit. A year of last access? To court records with fraudulent statements? Forever. The lawyers know they can get away with it now. I don’t know the scale, but I sit on a hill right now seemingly without remedy. I am a forgiving person.
> ... letters were so clearly fake that I replied telling him to piss off (in exactly so many words).
In this case I wonder if you should contact the law firm the letter is purportedly from (or Stanek if the firm doesn’t exist) warning them that some idiot is impersonating them and sending ridiculous letters, with a copy of one attached. Even if they really sent them it feels like an amusing way of telling them that their allegations are absurd.
I think I saw an example of this happening in another case, perhaps for a letter received by a baseball stadium.
I quickly determined that there was no such entity; that's part of why I felt completely comfortable responding as I did. Here's another example of fake legal threats in this affair, from what I would consider the canonical site about it.
IIRC (it was a long time ago) the email I received wasn't quite the same, but it was broadly similar - fake identity, clearly from someone barely educated let alone educated in law, same general amateurishness as Stanek's books and reviews.
BTW, while I'm here: this deep dive into l'Affaire Stanek might seem indulgent and off topic, but it's not. This is the archetype. This is how online defamation and anti-defamation campaigns play out. They're ugly, they're messy, lots of third parties get dragged in, and people do get hurt. To a defamer, merely getting your target involved in something so obviously tawdry is almost as good as having the initial accusations stick. The internet's infinite memory can be used in more than one way to get revenge, and I think that's important to know.
The point is that these kinds of revenge campaigns have been easy for a long time (my blog post was in 2003) and keep getting easier. Using Pinterest in this case seems like an interesting twist, since Google's suspicious love for them is already a matter of some discussion. It's also interesting that an NYT reporter takes a so-predictable swipe at Section 230 as part of the story. While I wouldn't be in favor of holding platform providers responsible for users' content, I do think defamation deserves to be treated with at least the same seriousness as copyright violation, for which special provisions already exist.
P.S. I'm well aware that Stanek accuses me of being the defamer. Such reciprocal accusations are practically always a feature of these cases, including OP, and that should be kept in mind when considering them.