The other side of the story.

Someone griped because they bad mouthed a local contractor on Nextdoor and the post disappeared. 

Well, no $hit, Sherlock. Nextdoor was covering their ass. Can't blame them for that....not even a little bit.

In libel suits both the writer and the publisher usually get sued.

The only defense against libel is truth and the Nextdoor people don't know what's true and what isn't. 

"Joe Blow walked off of my job on the first day and I haven't seen him since."

True. 

But why did Joe Blow walk off the minute he arrived?

Because the client didn't live up to their end of the bargain. They were supposed to empty the room because they were too cheap to pay Joe to do it and too lazy or stupid to do it themselves. They wanted to save money and when Joe showed up he took one look at the room, saw nothing had been moved and walked off.

Can't say as I blame him. I did the same thing once under the same circumstances. 

I wasn't going to take responsibility for dropping something on a glass coffee table or spilling paint on an antique desk. I'd be just plain stupid to. Later when the homeowner asked me why I walked I told them just that. They didn't live up to their end of the bargain.

Later when they tried to bad mouth me the most common answer they got is "What did you expect? You didn't live up to your end of the bargain?"

Of course the homeowners (Ken and Karen) were indignant when they were confronted by the rest of the story that people heard from me. Those that knew them confirmed it was a likely scenario.

So Karen and Ken have a bad experience with a contractor. They run their keyboard on Nextdoor, the contractor sues and wins. It would be one thing if Karen and Ken footed the entire bill but they're not. Nextdoor has deeper pockets and likely they will foot the bulk of it.

And, THAT Dear Reader is why your little complaint disappeared.

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I recall some dolt that posted a picture of an alleged speeder that supposedly was going at some tremendous rate of speed down her street. They were behind them and (probably) reached for their camera and snapped a quick photo.

The photo, apparently taken with a fast shutter speed proved nothing. It actually looked to me like someone had parked the car badly on the side of the road AND the picture displayed their tag number.

This means the driver following the speeder was likely speeding AND driving distracted and was far more of a danger than the speeder who was speeding and therefore probably paying attention to what they were doing.

I called them out on that one and pointed out that they were in effect doxxing someone and if they had done the same thing to me I would have shown up at the doorstep of the occupant of 1234 Main Street and had a little talk with them.

1243 Main Street was their address. It took me two minutes to look it up based on their names and information posted on Nextdoor.

The whole thread disappeared. Fair enough.

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To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY