Terms & Definitions
Defamation
A false statement of fact, communicated to a third party, that damages the reputation of a person or business. Legal standards vary by jurisdiction; this glossary provides general technical context, not legal advice.
Libel
Defamation in a fixed, typically written or published form — the category most internet defamation (posts, reviews, articles) falls into, as opposed to spoken slander.
John Doe Subpoena
A subpoena issued in a lawsuit against an unidentified defendant, used to compel a platform or internet service provider to disclose identifying information about an anonymous poster.
Wayback Machine / Archive.org
A nonprofit digital archive that periodically crawls and saves snapshots of web pages. Coverage is inconsistent and frequently does not include social media posts or individual reviews, which matters significantly for evidence preservation strategy.
IP Address Attribution
The process of using an IP address logged by a platform or server to identify the general location or, with additional legal process, the account holder responsible for online activity. Does not by itself establish the identity of a specific individual.
Sock Puppet Account
A fake or secondary online account created to disguise the identity of the person controlling it, often used to post or amplify defamatory content while appearing to be an independent voice.
Review Bombing
A coordinated effort to flood a business with negative reviews in a short period, often unrelated to genuine customer experience.
Google Business Profile
Google's free business listing product, formerly Google My Business, where customer reviews for local businesses appear directly in Google Search and Google Maps.
Cached Page
A stored copy of a web page kept by a search engine or third-party tool at the time it was last crawled, sometimes usable as evidence that content existed at a specific point in time.
Metadata
Data about data — such as a post's timestamp, the device used to create an image, or a file's edit history — that can help establish when and how content was created or altered.
Deepfake
Media, typically video or audio, that has been synthetically generated or altered using machine learning to convincingly depict a person saying or doing something they did not.
Search Visibility Harm
Measurable reduction in a website's or individual's presence in search results, traffic, or rankings that can be attributed to defamatory content, and quantified for damages purposes.
Daubert Standard
The evidentiary standard, from Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, used in federal and many state courts to assess whether expert testimony is based on reliable methodology and is relevant to the case.
Chain of Custody
The documented, chronological record of how evidence was collected, handled, and preserved, used to establish that evidence has not been altered or tampered with.