Renter Sued for Libel due to Twitter Post

In what is going to be a great example of The Streisand Effect, the Horizon Group Management LLC is suing a former renter of a property managed by the organization. With the somewhat dubious proclamation of “We’re a ‘sue first, ask questions later’ kind of an organization,” they come across as an organization out to SLAPP someone. This now public discussion is going to gather steam. It will do so particularly with people of the internet age who believe that a post on what I call an instant-context-forum, such as Twitter and Facebook, amounts to a comment between a small group of friends sitting around a table. The amount of harm here is going to grow, but only because they sued, and subsequently it was made public. No other real reason. It would have been whoever was following that user, in this case named “abonnen” on Twitter. Apparently, it either was taken down completely, or there is such a mad rush to view the offending tweet that I can’t reach it. Anyway, it is making its rounds. [Source]

Ethically, the problem falls in an apparent break between people who live their lives digitally, and those who make claims such as “We’re a sue first, ask questions later, kind of organization” which probably doesn’t spend too much time online or thinking about how society is changing. Is it okay to make claims that a company doesn’t think its wrong to fix a mold problem as abonnen claimed? Perhaps, but we don’t know the full back story of what transpired. Perhaps repeated attempts at getting the renters problems fixed had failed and Bonnen simply vented to her friends who follow her tweets. Now, Jonathan Turley has blogged about it, and it is on Reddit.com, which doesn’t bode well.

Okay, so it is spreading more and more… via TechMeme: