I think its a mostly US based app, in the US sharing your opinion about other people is protected speech.
A remarkable fact that's stayed with me: Ken White (@popehat) once said that in his defamation law practice, his largest category of consultations was with clients who'd said negative things about a past romantic partner, who then threatened to sue. I believe his point was those negative things were true most of the time, but difficult to prove, or defend.
Yes, and? The service is protected in the US by Section 230, and Tea doesn't operate anywhere else currently. Individual users who use it defame are, in principal, subject to defamation liability, but in the US (and, again, that’s the only jurisdiction currently relevant), the burden to proving that the description was both false and at least negligently made (as well as the other elements of the tort) falls on the plaintiff (it is often said that “truth is an absolute defense”, but that’s misleading—falsity and fault are both elements of the prima facie case the plaintiff must establish.)
Sure, in a jurisdiction with strict liability for libel and where truth is actually a defense, and/or where the platform itself, being a deep pockets target, was exposed, Tea would be a more precarious business. But that’s not where it operates.
I suspect that's going to be more of a problem for Tea than hypothetical individual defamation cases.
Although having said that, how can you sue someone for defamation if you never find out you're being defamed?
Any woman can say "Don't date [name], he's a bad person" and the victim will never know.
Unless he asks a female friend for a social credit check, all [name] will see is a shrinking pool of opportunities.
"He's a bad person and you shouldn't date him" is an opinion you can legally express anywhere as much as you want.
I mean, I think it depends what you claim in this post.
It’s hardly a rebuttal when I have to go and find all the evidence to prove myself wrong.
I think sometimes folks don't properly threat model what can be done if someone chooses to think about what the consequences for breaking a rule are and letting that guide their actions, rather than striving to avoid breaking them out of some kind of moral principle.
1) The truth is an absolute defense against libel claims, but it is a defense, so you must prove the truth of your claims.
2) Statements of opinion (or that a “reasonable person” would understand to be opinion) are with few exceptions protected. “Firefax is a rapist” is likely to not be considered a statement of opinion. “Firefax is a creepy asshole” likely is. “Firefax is a sexual predator” is probably going to be in a grey area and context and damages will be relevant.
3) The more “public” of a person you are, the harder it is to win a libel case, even the statements were false. For example, let’s say it turns out both that there is some “Epstein List” describing clients and their activities, and also that it turns out Trump doesn’t appear anywhere in that list. Trump is such a public figure (both as a celebrity and as the POTUS) that he would be extremely unlikely to win any libel cases against the internet randos confidently asserting he’s on the list even though that statement would have been a statement of fact, and would have been false.
4) A key part of the “opinion” grey area is whether you imply knowledge of heretofore unknown facts, or your relying on publicly available data. Internet randos might not lose a case, but someone like Elon Musk might if they said something like “I’ve seen the case files, Trump is definitely on that list and has done some sick things”. This is because Musk could reasonably be believed to have had privileged access to the information in question and have non-public facts they are basing their statements on. Internet randos on the other hand are largely going to be considered making their statements on the back of publicly known facts (e.g. photos, business connections, public actions and statements) and general “vibes”
Some social problems just don't have technological solutions.
Those ten reports could be made by one person. That one person might not even know the person they're accusing. That one person might be a man. That one person might be a bot.
You'd have to ignore the last three decades of online identity, trolling and social media pitfalls to not recognize that.
And please don't compare reviewing a can opener on Amazon to accusing someone anonymously of a heinous crime on an app built by one person.
But I'm not sure I'm going to convince you with words so I'll suggest this:
Go and build this app.
Build it, see what happens. Nobody else has been able to crack this but maybe you can.
It might be relavent to who wins the lawsuit, but sometimes the mere existence of a lawsuit is pretty painful.
I mean if witches didn't do anything surely they wouldn't be hunted down.
A well-designed system will maximize utility for the former, and minimize utility for the latter. An app where women can leave what are practically anonymous reviews for men is not such a system.
This isn't all of the people, but in my experience in life it's more than enough to make this app impossible to filter.
A lot of men have had experiences like this one. Either directly or they know someone it happened to. Yeah #NotAllWomen but way too many will exploit the feminist #BelieveAllWomen culture to gain even trivial benefits. An app devoted to letting women anonymous gossip and engage in reputation warfare without fear of consequence, or even fear that the man might reply in self defense, is going to get flooded with women like the taxi passenger.
Go read some statistics on the number of women harassed, abused, raped, and killed every day—every single day—because they are women.
Go ask your mother, your sister, your wife, your female best friend, when they had their last abusive encounter.
Go ask your friends of both genders what the worst things are that could happen to them when walking home at night, and compare the responses.
Go read some historic accounts of how women were treated for… pretty much all of history.
Go look up news articles of what can happen to women when riding a taxi. Spoiler: it’s not just a threat.
Yes, there are some abusive women out there. Yes, it’s fucked up when that happens to you. But trying to insinuate the levels of violence against men would be even remotely comparable is just plain awful.
By people going on the same sort of rants like you just did.
Some People are terrible, especially when they think they can act without consequences.
Does that excuse men doing bad things too? No.
But it sure does (or should!) make anyone with a brain question hyperbolic claims of abuse or violence without actual evidence.
After the big war, some Germans were quick to point out that their people had suffered when they were displaced from the land they occupied in Poland, for example, and that "both sides had suffered". I assume you're also incapable of understanding why the victims of the Nazi regime were completely aghast by that?
> But it sure does (or should!) make anyone with a brain question hyperbolic claims of abuse or violence without actual evidence.
What do you suggest to do instead? Sexual violence is often a crime with only the perpetrator(s) and the victim as witnesses. In most cases, rape doesn't leave persistent traces. Rape victims tend to be in shock, however, and often need time to process what happened. Your suggestion seems to be that we should question these claims?
Judging these cases correctly is incredibly complicated, and claims of wide swaths of men falling prey to abusive women don't really help anyone affected.
Yes, we should question those claims, and any others. Or everyone who wants to be shitty will do it via that route. It’s basic shitty human behavior.
That it screws actual victims is why people gaming the system should be punished.
But not challenging these claims just makes more victims too. And eventually people will just tune out accusations, because the shittiness has gotten too pervasive. And then the predators/shitty humans will get be doing more actual rape eh? Which is terrible.
This is why it’s also prudent to be very careful who anyone is alone with, favor video recording of public spaces, etc. as well. Because the best way to avoid a situation is to make it as difficult as possible for the situation to occur, and minimize the chances of any ambiguity. Which is also shitty for everyone.
Personally, I also don’t trust the stats because I’ve seen many (5+) women retcon clearly consensual behavior (that they were even bragging about before!) into ‘he raped me’ when someone tried to shame them for it later, or there was some leverage they could get out of it. I had one who literally admitted to me when I investigated that she was doing it to punish the guy for refusing to date her later. Another was fine until she went home and her mom gave her crap about her dating behavior, and then all the sudden it was rape. Until we started to interview her for her story, and then she admitted it was consensual.
I very much believe actual rapes and SA’s occur. I personally have literally never seen an accusation for rape or SA that stood up to even the lightest scrutiny, within the environments I’ve been responsible for. And not because I was trying to avoid them!
The joys of being a manager of mixed sex groups eh?
If we could figure out the actual truth of these situations, then we could punish actual offenders and not constantly be in this BS situation.
That's not what it is intended for, but many people after relationships end can be extremely emotional and sometimes very spiteful. It's not uncommon for people to embellish or lie about the truth to make themselves look better and the other person look shitty. Especially if you're the one being dumped, you may be even more likely to engage in petty behaviour.
I personally have experienced an ex making up a sexual assault story. This kind of app didn't exist then, but she even went as far as reporting me to the police. Luckily the police investigated and could easily discern it was a lie. Going to the police is obviously a much higher burden than using an app, and yet many females still go make false SA claims there. Do you really think it wouldn't be a common problem for people to do the same in an app at a much higher rate?
People often believe things like SA claims without any evidence and will often even attack people trying to defend the person or insist on some kind of proof. It means that someone making up bull crap on these apps is going to be treated like it is true, yet the rates of lies would likely be pretty high.
People can just be so crazy when it comes to relationships/love. Especially when it comes to people in their teens or early 20's, the brain isn't fully developed and dealing with these emotions is even more challenging and leads to even more rash decision making.
The more common it is, the more damaging false claims of it are. It's a self-defeating linear relationship.
I have seen false rape claims, false claims of child abuse, neglect, etc.
With zero repercussions, of course.
coolcoolcool. I'm sure that never ever gets abused horrifically.
I still maintain my pet theory that this is a downstream effect of the normalization of paranoia around pedophiles that began hitting the mainstream in the '80s. The modern world is exceptionally safe, yet to the average person, it feels exceptionally dangerous.
...While I've got the hood up, I'll continue soapboxing.
I've started seeing rare instances such as a young woman walking around a corner and there is a man rounding the same corner, surprising her by mistake, and the woman starts crying or breathing in a panicked way, unable to regulate herself for several minutes. It's not always walking around the corner at the same time, but there's a common pattern of being surprised by a man just going about his day and experiencing a severe fear response to that interaction.
When I look at a lot of cultural related issues today, beyond just gender, I see many signs of pervasive psychological issues. I don't know what the solution is, but I'm very confident that the root cause is more complicated than something you can describe in a single sentence.
The same hypothetical 5% can inflict harm to multiple women, that's why multiple women and girls complained about Epstein and Trump.
But I was friends with my wife's friends before we got married, and in a sample size of ~20 women my age, every single one of them has experienced inappropriate and unwanted touching in social settings. And a large number of them were victims of outright rape.
In comparison, I have many male friends and of them, I only know one who has been wrongly accused of sexual assault (the lady openly talked about doing it to help with a promotion...)
So even if both sides may have a few bad apples, one side is a much more prevalent problem when it comes to the number of victims.