THE DARK SIDE OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD: $25K defamation lawsuit over negative Yelp review refiled against Wilson County woman. Apparently, there was a disagreement about her recording the session (she was not the patient), and she posted a nasty Yelp review saying that he’s unfit to practice medicine. Yelp has downgraded her review. His lawyer says recording the session was illegal (under HIPAA, I presume) because it endangered the privacy of patients. At any rate, it’s okay to sue people for false and defamatory reviews — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects Yelp, but the individual reviewer is still on the hook — but it’s not okay to sue people for truthful and non-defamatory reviews. Hard for me to say what’s going on here based on news accounts.

Meanwhile, the nice thing about the Internet is that, Yelp reviews not withstanding, the physician can give his side of the story. The downside is that Yelp users wouldn’t see it.

You could write a book on this stuff.