Internet Defamation Expert Witness: What the Record Proves
This site is for an attorney working an internet defamation matter, not for someone who has been defamed. It says what the technical record establishes and what it does not: 6 pages on the elements and what each one turns on, 6 on the methods and how far each carries, and 5 guides. Every page names something that will not work.
First: no United States opinion I could locate sets a standard for proving how many people saw something online. The research went looking and came back with nothing, and that absence is a finding rather than a gap. Second: Google, Reddit and Yelp publish no preservation or log-retention window at all. Meta and X publish ninety days; the statute provides ninety extendable by ninety. Any other number you have been quoted for those three operators came from somewhere other than the operator.
Two questions, in this order
What the element turns on decides whether a technical expert is any use at all — and on several of them the answer is no, because they belong to the fact-finder. How far the method carries decides what can actually be said about it once someone is retained. Most of the trouble I am asked to fix came from answering the second question before the first.
What Can Be Proved
6 pages on the elements — publication and spread, attribution and the record, identification and harm — each labeled with what the technical record establishes: on its own, alongside testimony, or not at all.
How It Is Established
6 pages on the methods — authentication and custody, what legal process returns, analysis and its limits — each labeled with how far it carries: reproducible, reproducible with assumptions stated, or contested.
The elements attorneys arrive asking about
Three things that decide how far the record goes
These are written to be useful to an attorney who never makes contact. A page captured as a screenshot rather than collected, a preservation letter sent to an operator that publishes no window, and a collection nobody can show is unchanged — those three decide more outcomes than any opinion does, and all three are cheap to get right early.
How this work actually runs
Who holds the record, then what process returns, then collection, then the analysis. Where an operator publishes nothing, the page says so and names the date its policies were read.
The six groups everything sits in
Publication and Spread
2 pagesWhether it was published, to how many, and how far it travelled after that.
Attribution and the Record
2 pagesWho wrote it, and what the contemporaneous record shows about it.
Identification and Harm
2 pagesWhether the content refers to the plaintiff, and how the damage is evidenced.
Authentication and Custody
2 pagesProving a page is what it is said to be, and that it has not changed since.
What Process Returns
2 pagesWhat a subpoena or preservation letter actually produces, and what no operator keeps.
Analysis and Its Limits
2 pagesThe methods that turn records into findings, and the assumptions each one carries.
If you want me to look at the record
I work with attorneys on internet defamation matters involving attribution, web evidence, exposure and what the platforms actually hold. I am not an attorney and I do not give legal advice. Tell me what element is in dispute and what still exists online, and I will tell you what the record can and cannot establish before anything else.