Disclaimer: This Is Not Legal Advice
Read this first if you found this site while looking for help with something published about you
If you are not a lawyer, read this part
This site is written for attorneys. It exists to help counsel handling an internet defamation matter work out what the technical record can and cannot establish, so they can decide what to ask for and whether to retain a technical expert.
If you found it while looking for help with something false published about you online, you have landed on the wrong kind of page. It is not a law firm site and I cannot advise you. The person you need is a lawyer who handles defamation, and you should talk to one before you do anything else — including before you contact the platform, respond publicly, or write to whoever posted it. What you do in the first week can matter, and I am not in a position to tell you what that should be.
Bill Hartzer is not an attorney
I am not a lawyer, I do not practice law, and nothing on this website is legal advice. I am an internet and search technology consultant who is retained by counsel as a technical expert.
Nothing here should be read as an opinion about whether a statement is defamatory, whether a claim exists, whether it is timely, what should be pleaded, what process should issue, which rules govern in any forum, or what any court would do with any set of facts. Those are legal questions and they belong to a licensed attorney. Where a page here describes a statute, a rule or a decided case, it does so as general background, reported as the underlying research found it, and never applied to your matter.
Nothing here is a promise about any outcome
No page on this site promises a result. Records show things, support things, or are consistent with things; they do not guarantee anything, and no technical finding is beyond challenge. Descriptions of what a method can establish describe the method at its best, in circumstances that may not match yours — where content was collected in time, where the records still exist, and where the holder produced them. A page describing what an analysis can support is not a forecast of what it will support in a particular case.
Reading this site, or writing to me, creates no engagement
Reading these pages establishes nothing between you and me. Sending a message through the contact page establishes nothing either — it is an inquiry, not a retention. There is no confidential relationship, no duty of care, and no obligation on my part until a conflict check has cleared, scope has been agreed and an engagement is confirmed in writing.
That is why the contact page asks for names before facts. Anything you send before a conflict check clears is not received in confidence. Send no privileged material, no client confidences, no case files and nothing covered by a protective order in a first message.
Everything here is as of the date you read it
This is the limitation most likely to catch someone out, so it is stated flatly. Platform policies, preservation practices, retention periods, disclosure and user-notice practices, published legal-request procedures and the case law described anywhere on this site are all accurate only as of the date the source was read — and every one of them changes without notice.
Operators rewrite policy pages without a changelog. A window published today may be absent next quarter, and a figure absent today may appear. Several numbers in wide circulation about how long particular platforms keep data cannot be traced to any current page published by those platforms, which is exactly why this site declines to repeat them. Verify anything you intend to rely on against the operator's own current page, and check the current state of any authority against the reporter.
No clients, no case studies, no representative results
This site names no client and describes no specific matter. Where the work is described, it is described generically and on purpose: engagements are confidential, and a website is not the place to characterize anyone's case. There are no testimonials here and no representative results, because past engagements say nothing reliable about a different matter on different facts.
What this site does not cover
These pages address what technical records can establish and how that work is done. They do not address court procedure, the standards a court applies to expert testimony, or how testimony is given. They do not address content removal, platform appeals, suppression or reputation repair. And they cannot tell you which of the elements in your matter are technical questions at all — some are not, and no expert settles those. If that is not what you came for, this site will not help, and the right next step is counsel.