alt Hacker News(IAAL but this is not legal advice.)
It’s not libel. Defamation requires a false statement of fact. Marking a website as “unsafe” is an opinion.
Replies
Google is stating in a position of authority. It's therefore being stated as at least a professional opinion with the equivalent weight of fact, or representing facts.
If the opinion is meant to be just another opinion, then it shouldn't cause any blacklisting of any sorts anywhere.
Depends on jurisdiction. In the UK it's not an absolute defence, you still have to prove it's an opinion a "reasonable person" could come to based on facts.
How is it any more of an opinion to "mark" a website as "unsafe" than say, "contains CSAM"?
Maybe libel is the wrong term, but erroneously marking a website as unsafe can lead to damages.
As someone who has also been bit by this, and with the only possible resolution being that I sign up for google services and register my site with them in the google search dashboard...
Fuck Google.
This is absolutely libel. They put a big fucking red banner on top of my site, telling the world that it's unsafe, using all the authority they have as one of the largest tech companies in the world.
In my case - it was a jellyfin instance I'd stood up to host family videos of my kids for my parents.
It was not compromised, and showed only a login page. I reported it as a false flag repeatedly, for weeks, with Google doing jack fucking shit.
Only after signing up in their search console and registering the site did the warning disappear.
They are abusively forcing people into their products. Fuck Google.
In case it wasn't entirely clear - Google can get fucked. Fuck Google.
That depends on jurisdiction. E.g. in South Korea true statements can constitute defamation too
That sounds like a spurious distinction. Pretty sure you can’t say “Person X is a murderer” and then say “well I’m only expressing my opinion, and in my opinion if you do something that annoys me that qualifies as murder.”
In my opinion, a .online domain is unsafe. 99% of people only visit ".com"s unless they clicked a scam link. Completely blocking the site is overkill, but the browser should warn you about it like it does with non-SSL sites.
> Marking a website as “unsafe” is an opinion.
No, it's not.
You're welcome to cite case law if you want to insist. Otherwise, unsafe (in the context of infosec) has a definition of likely or able to cause harm or malfunction. Something that is provable or falsifiable with evidence.