Morning all. This is quite a fast moving issue - but here's an update to outline our general approach and processes when faced with a defamation complaint.
Firstly, as a rule, if one of our users doesn't want to contest a court order they can ask us to contest it for them. We're more than happy to do this, especially if there are fears for privacy, doxxing etc.
Here is an overview of our process when we receive a complaint:
If a user on Mumsnet is accused of making a defamatory post, we follow the Defamation Act 2013, in particular section 5
This is absolutely standard. We let the user know about the complaint and the user can then choose to let their post stand or not. If they want to stand by it, by law they have to provide us with their details.
They can choose whether these details are passed to the complainant or not. If they choose not to pass on their details, then the complainant can get a court order to obtain the details (as we note in the Exceptional Circumstances section of our privacy policy.
That’s where we are in this process, we let the user know about the court order and waited to receive the court documents.
Again - the general rule is that a user can contest a court order - or they can ask us to contest it for them.
On a side note... we've made some deletions in this thread - please do try to keep contributions within the letter and spirit of our Talk guidelines.