Social Media Defamation in Virginia
Facebook, the largest social media network in the world, published about thirty-one million messages and posts per minute in 2015. Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin boast smaller numbers, but not by much. As social networks have expanded, so have the cases in which plaintiffs have successfully recovered damages for defamatory statements made on social media sites. Cases like Courtney Love’s have even created new terms of art in defamation, like ‘Twibel,’ which means a libelous statement made on the Twitter platform.