Critics of Ed Magedson and the Ripoff Report® don’t hold back much. Here are some actual quotes from a few of Ed’s anonymous critics:
“Ed Magedson is a wanted CRIMINAL…”
“The Ripoff Report is involved in RACKETEERING…”
These are harsh words. If true, these would be very serious allegations.
Sadly, these statements are NOT true. They are lies that the REAL crooks spread in an effort to discredit the Ripoff Report. Think about it – if you repeat a lie often enough, some people may start to believe it no matter how groundless it might be. That’s what Ed’s critics are counting on.
Let’s cut through the nonsense and give you some facts instead of the lies Ed’s critics love to use. If you hear Ed’s side of the story and still want to criticize him, that’s your prerogative.
The bottom line is this – most people who are upset with Ed Magedson feel that way because they think Ed is legally (or morally) responsible for the accuracy of complaints posted on the Ripoff Report. A lot of people who have had allegedly false complaints posted about them or their business feel a need to blame Ed for not “investigating” the report first, or for not removing it when asked.
Anyone who has spent even five minutes researching Ripoff Report’s legal background knows – despite fighting 199 lawsuits against us, ((as of September 2021)) Ripoff Report has never lost a case. It has never lost because courts have consistently determined that Ed and the Ripoff Report are not legally responsible for the accuracy of statements posted by users of the site. Sorry, but that’s the law. Ripoff Report has collected Millions of dollars from both Plaintiff’s and their Attorneys who have sued.
Here is a Ripoff Report about a lawyer who sued us and had to pay us about $250,000 in Massachusetts.
And this case where the Attorney, a prosecutor had to pay us $750,000.
Okay, but just because a court ruled one way in the past doesn’t mean that a different court can’t reach a different conclusion in the future, right? Laws can always be changed to address new media and new situations. Has the time come to consider changing the law to make Ripoff Report responsible for everything that’s posted on the site?
As you might expect, Ed’s answer is pretty simple – no, of course the law shouldn’t be changed. But do you know WHY Ed feels that way? Have you ever stopped to consider what would happen if the law was changed?
Consider this – anyone who has seen the movie “The Social Network” knows the story of Facebook – the site was founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg who became the youngest billionaire in history as his site grew to more than 2.85 billion monthly active users. Not everyone uses Facebook on a daily basis, but most people who try the site realize what a useful tool it can be for sharing ideas, reconnecting with old friends and making new ones.
Of course, with over 2.85 billion users monthly, Facebook cannot and does not screen every posting on the site for accuracy. In fact, anyone can anonymously create a free Facebook account in a matter of minutes and using that account they can say anything they want, 24 hours a day, visible to anyone with a computer anywhere on Earth. Although, in recent years Facebook is making a good effort to make improvements as does Ripoff Report.
Does that mean Mark Zuckerberg (or Facebook staff) should be required to personally review and investigate every statement posted on Facebook by every one of its billion plus users? How could Facebook even begin to do that, and what if you disagreed with Facebook’s conclusions? What then?
Here’s the problem — if the law was changed to make website operators legally responsible for the speech of their users, the result would be this – Facebook would no longer exist as we know it. Anyone who was offended by someone else’s post on Facebook could simply contact the site, say the post was false, and it would be immediately removed. As a matter of simple economics, even a successful site like Facebook could never afford to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees defending lawsuits over material posted by users. Rather than facing “death by 10,000 duck bites” fighting case after case, Facebook would have no choice but to remove material regardless of its truth or accuracy.
Just think how this would affect the amount and type of speech online. Republicans could hire people to watch Democratic blogs and then submit cease-and-desist letters to the blog host demanding the removal of anything remotely questionable. Because the host could face liability if it failed to remove something on request, the result would be rampant censorship of important ideas and opinions which people have a right to express.
This is what Ed’s critics don’t seem to realize – if you changed the law for Ripoff Report, you’d also be changing it for Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yelp!, Amazon Reviews and even Google. All of these sites have content provided by users, and a lot of that content would vanish if the website host could be held responsible for something created by a user. Then as a result, millions of consumers would get ripped off.
If you have been falsely criticized in an online post, changing the law may seem like a no-brainer. But do we really want to live in a world where free speech is no longer free?
Ed Magedson believes the First Amendment is more important than that. So, when other sites run and hide, removing content rather than dealing with a lawsuit, Ed doesn’t hide. He puts his money where his mouth is – spending millions of his own money defending the right of every American to speak freely.
Now that you’ve heard Ed’s side of the story, if you still want to criticize him, that’s your right. Just don’t forget to thank Ed for fighting to protect the First Amendment rights we all enjoy!
Sylvia
Oliver warders
Aaron
<strong>Aaron,
WOW -- I'm sorry but you REALLY have no idea what you are talking about. We don't "completely fail" to address this situation; it is discussed at length on our <a href="https://www.ripoffreport.com/faq#whyripoffreportdoesntremovereports" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">FAQ page</a>.
Furthermore, let me offer these additional comments. First of all, you make it sound like it's easy to get Facebook to take down anything you want. No honest person would say this. Facebook is CONSTANTLY being criticized (and rightly so) for refusing to remove all sorts of horrible content including videos of mass shootings, suicides, self-harm, etc. Yes, it's true that Facebook will sometimes take things down, but in our experience that's extremely rare. If you don't believe me, just pick a page on Facebook that you don't like, and then ask Facebook to take it down.
Also, keep in mind - Facebook does absolutely nothing to pre-screen content before it's posted. Yes, they do have some algorithms that block some nudity, but beyond that, you can post absolutely anything on Facebook and it goes live immediately without any screening.
Unlike Facebook, Ripoff Report employs a staff of people to pre-screen content. NO, our screeners do not fact-check reports (how could they?), but they do follow a set of written guidelines that requires them to block certain types of illegal content like child porn, bank account numbers, social security numbers, and so forth. Yes, I am sure that's not good enough for you (nothing is), but the fact is that Ripoff Report DOES spend a lot of money trying to reduce the amount of illegal content on our site, while many larger sites like Facebook do little or nothing at all to pre-screen content.
As for your suggestion that Ripoff Report should remove content just because "the original poster AND the business owner both ask for a post to be removed", why would that make any sense? Based on more than 20 years of experience, I can tell you that in the vast majority of cases, what happens is this:
-- Author submits a completely true report explaining how they were ripped off;
-- Unscrupulous company threatens to sue the author for millions of dollars unless the report is removed;
-- Author cannot afford to spend money defending a frivolous lawsuit, so they ask us to remove their report solely to avoid the cost of a lawsuit, even though the report is 100% true.
As we always explain -- if an author wants to RETRACT their report for legitimate reasons, that's 100% fine. They can simply update their report and explain that the issue has been resolved (or whatever the case may be). Can they remove their original report? NO, because even when a report is resolved (and even if the report originally contained mistakes), the public still has a right to know about it. This is why courts don't remove/destroy their records when a claim is dismissed or a defendant is found not guilty. Ripoff Report's policy is exactly the same as the one most courts use -- you can always UPDATE the record to show how a case was resolved, but you don't hide the docket completely.
--ED</strong>
Letitia Pepper
Those companies should be treated as publishers under the First Amendment because they are censoring what appears on their platforms. Like publishers, once they purport to start fact-checking posts, they have to take responsibility for unconstitutional censorship.
In contrast, you are not censoring the posts on your website. You are leaving it up to readers to decide if the lists match their own experiences or not. You are providing a public service like a notice board, not a public service as an investigative reporter.
Prefer not to say right now
Negative things posted then handle the issues. You can also make a rebuttal post. Once I posted a true story to YELP
about a company and they removed it, and I know it was an incredibly crazy story but it was a true story. How is that making Yelp good for consumers? I never look at YELP now cuz companies
can have the removal of negative comment And then put in fake good content. Don’t censor our complaints !!! Long live the first amendment! And readers and listeners use common sense and don’t believe everything you hear either. You will serve yourself welll by being slightly sceptical of everything and double checking everything first.
Terry Fowler
David
<strong>
David,
Sorry -- saying that someone is "hiding" behind the First Amendment is a weak cop-out. It's just not as simple as you suggest. As a starting point, it is IMPOSSIBLE (meaning: NOT POSSIBLE) for a website owner to serve as the truth police. In case that isn't clear, here is the problem -- whether or not something is protected by the First Amendment involves a very, very, very, very complicated legal and factual analysis. Step #1 is to determine whether or not the statement is factually true. Of course, in the vast majority of situations, posts on Ripoff Report involve facts/events that happened between two private parties, and the only people who know the truth are the parties themselves. In virtually every instance, it is NOT possible for any outsider to conclusively know which side is telling the truth. That is why ROR's policy is to allow both sides to tell their story and let the readers decide for themselves who and what to believe.
If a post on ROR can be proven false with evidence, then the answer is really simple -- the affected party can just post their evidence in a rebuttal, thus allowing the world to see the truth. The fact that we allow both sides to speak their own truth does not mean we are hiding behind the First Amendment --- on the contrary, it means we are letting the First Amendment work exactly as intended.
Of course, I know the typical response to this argument: "Well, yeah, but most people won't bother to read everything...they will just see that Company X has a complaint on Ripoff Report and then they will decide Company X is bad and shouldn't be trusted."
I'm really sorry if that's true, but if people can't be bothered to read both sides, why is that my fault?
-- ED</strong>
Terese
and applying common sense!
Sanser Meitou