The restaurant can sue all of the other users for libel, and if it's a coordinated effort or the apparent facts behind each libelous act are sufficiently similar, they can get them joined into a class action imposing joint and several liability imposed on the named defendants (i.e. the few they are able to reasonably identify), meaning that it is now the named defendants' responsibility to find the other users if they want to avoid paying the full damages out of their own pockets.
Believe it or not, all of these hypothetical that techies keep bringing up on HN in this thread as if they were magical logical bullets have long been addressed by courts and/or legislators.
> Believe it or not, all of these hypothetical that techies keep bringing up on HN in this thread as if they were magical logical bullets have long been addressed by courts and/or legislators.
Are you sure you're not engaging in some magical thinking when you imagine Yelp users enjoined as a defendant class? When is the last high profile case where something like this happened?
The restaurant can sue all of the other users for libel, and if it's a coordinated effort or the apparent facts behind each libelous act are sufficiently similar, they can get them joined into a class action imposing joint and several liability imposed on the named defendants (i.e. the few they are able to reasonably identify), meaning that it is now the named defendants' responsibility to find the other users if they want to avoid paying the full damages out of their own pockets.
Believe it or not, all of these hypothetical that techies keep bringing up on HN in this thread as if they were magical logical bullets have long been addressed by courts and/or legislators.