Angry Crypto Firm Posts Weird Cease & Desist Letter To Its Own Blog; DMs It To Critics
from the that's-not-how-any-of-this-works dept
You know things are going just great in crypto-land when a cryptocurrency company has to post a vague cease-and-desist letter to its own blog. Everything about this is bizarre, but it culminated in this very strange cease-and-desist blog post by Nexo.
There is a separate blog post that sort of, but not quite, tries to explain what’s going on, noting that a Twitter user has started to spread a false story about the company. And, indeed, Nexo makes a compelling case that the Twitter user “otteroooo” posted a blatantly false (and most likely defamatory — something I don’t say lightly) claim about Nexo’s co-founder, possibly confusing him (whether on purpose or not) with a very different individual who has a somewhat similar (but really not that close) name.
So, yes, sure, I can totally understand Nexo being mad. And I can totally understand and appreciate Nexo posting its compelling argument for why otterroooo’s claims are full of shit.
But… that still doesn’t explain posting a cease-and-desist to your blog. For that, you have to look elsewhere, and see that Nexo is apparently sending Direct Messages to people on social media when they retweet the otteroooo tweets, and (1) sharing with them the explanation blog post and (2) the cease-and-desist.
Except, even then, this doesn’t make much sense. The cease-and-desist is not specific (because, how can it be when it’s just out there for everyone) and completely overstates what is “unlawful.”
If they want to send a cease-and-desist letter to people spreading false information, there are ways to do that, but posting it to your blog seems like a way to call negative attention to yourself, and get you ridiculed, much more than it is likely to get anyone to cease or desist even if you have a decent argument for why people should cease and desist.
Filed Under: cease and desist, defamation
Companies: nexo
Comments on “Angry Crypto Firm Posts Weird Cease & Desist Letter To Its Own Blog; DMs It To Critics”
DMCA bait?
At first I thought the ‘published’ blog post C&D was one of those John Steele-esque ‘I’m just way too smart’ attempts to end-run around press coverage by claiming a copyright in the C&D because it was published, but the length of the DM torpedo’s that idea.
Not Wikipedia
I gave a thought to this being part of their Wikipedia entry since citations have to be verifiable, that is, previously published. To be considered previously published, being found online is sufficient [citation needed]. But neither Nexo nor otteroooo have entries.
i just enjoy the fact that it’s a 2 minute read.
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Bizarre
It’s pretty much the same thing that you do here on Techdirt every day – you tell people to “cease and desist” from expressing any view that does not align with yours. You tell them (and everyone else) by hiding (censoring) their speech (post). That’s pretty clear, and documented extensively over a multi-year period. Cease and desist expressing any view but the Techdirt view. Whih is bizarre, of course. Techdirt is nothing if not bizarre.
Re:
[Hallucinates facts not in reality]
Well that's one way to torch good will...
Having a bot to automatically reply to retweets of content they have a legal problem with I could see as somewhat reasonable, having it point to a cease and desist with not at all veiled threats about how the retweeters are engaged in ‘malicious spreading of inaccurate, fake and unfounded information‘ and how that would entitle them to claim compensation for the retweet? Not so much.
Whoever made the choice to have that as their response to someone slamming them needs to be fired and replaced because if anything they are likely just helping the person they’ve got a problem with by making sure people will not be on their side thanks to those threats.
Like service via tweet has never been authorized before.
This is someone who doesn’t understand how things actually work, but thinks they do, is trying to manage an attack on the company.
These actions they have undertaken made the @otterooo account more believable.
DMing people who were on a tweet chain smacks of desperation & trying to hide something.
One could have posted a blog post answering the things the account had posted, with the actual facts as reported by others linked.
One could then file a lawsuit, if there is actually defamation & lies.
One could then crush the liar underfoot.
One could then post that they had been vindicated in a court of law, that none of these claims had any merit.
One then goes back to work…
What they have done is drawn much more attention to the claims, fueled that fire, and is that their nose there on the floor they vut off to spite their face?
Re:
Yeah the closer made it clear this was not written by a lawyer or anyone with legal expertise:
“entitling us to seek full indemnity therefor.”
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/indemnity.asp
C&D sent to Techdirt in 3, 2, 1…
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