[ih] Defamation lawsuit brought by self-proclaimed email "inventor" settles

[Richard Bennett]

Yeah, Dave’s claim that there was no meaningful campaign to censor Ayyadurai is disingenuous at best. Masnick himself took part in the (successful) campaign to have the Huffington Post series on Ayyadurai’s claims removed or identified as sponsored posts in a very long Sep 2nd, 2014 post on Techdirt.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140901/07280928386/huffpo-publishes-bizarre-misleading-factually-incorrect-multi-part-series-pretending-guy-invented-email-even-though-he-didnt.shtml <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140901/07280928386/huffpo-publishes-bizarre-misleading-factually-incorrect-multi-part-series-pretending-guy-invented-email-even-though-he-didnt.shtml>:

"It's unclear why Huffington Post is publishing this ludicrous and disproven narrative. It's unclear why one of the biggest names in PR is involved in all of this, though you can take some guesses. But there are facts, and they include that "electronic mail" existed long before V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai wrote his program as a precocious teenager. Huffington Post is either not disclosing a paid-for series of posts (which would be a massive ethical breach) or they've been taken for a ride. Neither option speaks well of HuffPo and its journalistic integrity."

Dave is inclined to hair-splitting so he’ll want to say “Masnick never actually, literally said ’take down these posts today!’”. While that’s semi-factual, Masnick's claim that Huffington Post published material damaging to "its journalistic integrity” strongly suggests that Huffington Post should take actions to restore said integrity, such as labeling the post as pay-to-play or removing them. In the end, Huffington Post acceded to Masnick’s charges and removed them. Would Huffington Post have removed these posts without Masnick’s pressure? I doubt it, but we’ll never know. 

RB

> On May 19, 2019, at 10:06 PM, Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net> wrote:
> 
> More importantly, it's massively obvious that there's been no meaningful 
> effort to prevent his speech anywhere.
> 
> d/
> 
> ps. BTW, just to make the point:  freedom of speech refers to strictures 
> against governmental processes; it does not require that any specific 
> person be given access to any particular venue under private control. 
> Such as HuffPost.
> 
> -- 
> Dave Crocker
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net

—
Richard Bennett
High Tech Forum Founder
Ethernet & Wi-Fi standards co-creator

Internet Policy Consultant

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