Additionally, she tried to blame Rajala for another woman’s response in the thread, which she linked to a mugshot of a convicted rapist. Even though the mugshot link showed another man’s name and photo, D’Ambrosio claimed he had been defamed and had “suffered emotional distress, emotional loss, loss of professional opportunities, and damage to his reputation and relationships.”
His goal, Hamilton’s opinion noted, was to sue “anyone remotely associated with those posts for every claim possible and imaginable, including the woman who dated him and her parents, the women who comment on the posts, the operators of the Facebook group, and Facebook itself.”
On her blog, Trent acknowledged that these Facebook groups “were ostensibly created to help women navigate dating safely,” but claimed that some women abuse the groups to spark harassment campaigns accusing innocent men of spreading sexually transmitted infections or forcing women to have abortions.
“They are making it easier for people to contact their bosses, their employers, to further compound the damage,” Trent alleged.
Importantly, D’Ambrosio did not allege any concrete harm caused by the post and there is no evidence that the post resulted in inappropriate contact in the real world.
He also never argued that anything women said about him was false. Very late in the game, his lawyers tried to save his case by arguing that it was possible that the screenshot Rajala shared was doctored. But the panel rejected that argument since D’Ambrosio had ample opportunity to question the authenticity of the text earlier in the litigation, and never did so before oral arguments during the appeal.
An Internet law expert following the case, Eric Goldman, explained that D’Ambrosio’s case is similar to other lawsuits in which men tried and failed to have critical posts removed from “Spill the Tea”-branded Facebook groups, such as the Chicago-based “Are We Dating the Same Guy” group. Time and time again, these men fail, largely because publications like Rajala’s are considered opinions protected by the First Amendment and defamation laws in states like Illinois.
