Social Media Defamation, loading…
Lately, I’ve been seeing more and more investigations triggered by social media. I wanted to talk a little about some strange case experiences we’ve had, technical absurdities, and how people sometimes end up looking guilty while actually being right.
Keyboard fights exploded lately. Then again, in Türkiye even a traffic light can turn into a fight if the stars align badly enough. Honestly, someone should probably write an entirely separate article called “35 Plate Politeness and the Others.” People in İzmir still feel at least one level more civilized to me. (Gamer-coder generation vocabulary, what can I say.) At least a horn honk is slightly less likely to turn into a medieval war there.
On the social media side, a tiny incident can suddenly become a criminal file. One comment. One story. One meme. One screenshot. Then clients start sending me PDFs while panicking before I even open the file. “Lawyer, I think I’m screwed” . Screwed based on what exactly? There is no technical examination yet. No raw data. No verified records. Yet people mentally collapse within minutes. Police station and courthouse psychology feeds that fear too. “Come on… Facebook can’t be wrong, right?” By the way, people can call it Meta if they want. I still call them Facebook. That’s the name stuck in my head. I’m keeping it.
I’ve seen bizarre things in these files. Cropped messages. Shifted timestamps. Half the conversation deleted while the remaining half gets handed to the court as “evidence.” I’ve seen accounts used by three different people. I’ve seen ex-partners controlling accounts. I’ve seen cases described as “absolutely criminal” where no IP record even existed. One of my all-time favorites was seeing “Translated with Google Translate” written directly inside prosecution documents. They literally translated a foreign report using automatic translation software. We took screenshots of it and printed them out. Inside the office we jokingly call it “Pro Translation.”
People think digital files are extremely powerful from the outside. The moment they see a screenshot everybody suddenly turns into FBI. Then you actually open the file and the Lego starts falling apart. Was the content public? Unknown. Who uploaded it? Unknown. UTC or local time? Mixed up. NAT IP appears but no port record exists. The account looks correct but the session turns out to originate from another device. Sometimes even the company employee receiving the report never actually viewed the content personally, yet the accusation itself sounds massive. The accusation loads in two minutes. The proof part stays loading…
The strangest part? Sometimes you do not even know who accused you for a very long time. Complaints can arrive anonymously. Someone directly reports the account to a company. Sometimes an intermediary reporting system gets involved. Sometimes records arrive from a foreign-based platform. The actual complainant remains unclear. People ask me, “Can that really happen?” Oh yes. It can. It did. We saw it. In some files you first spend time understanding the reporting structure itself before even figuring out who complained. You request technical records. You wait for responses from the U.S. You examine logs. Eventually the picture becomes clearer. And yes… we solved those too 😎
The biggest mistake people make is panicking themselves into disaster. They end up sinking themselves. They give statements before even seeing the file. “I was angry.” “It was just a joke.” “I don’t really remember.” Then the situation snowballs. Instead, the file should be examined first. Was there actually a post? Where is the original version? Are there technical records? Or is everybody panicking over a random screenshot floating around online? At some point people psychologically start asking themselves: “How exactly am I supposed to prove I didn’t do something?”
One of my all-time favorite defenses is still: “My cousin did it.” People laugh when they hear that. But we genuinely hear it. Then everyone instantly labels the person ignorant. To be fair, many people really do not understand how sessions remain open, how accounts are shared, how access works, or how devices interact. I never called those people stupid. No need to attack me immediately. But digital criminal files are unforgiving. A badly constructed defense can make someone look guilty even when technically they may be right.
Years ago there were even public discussions about a retired judge allegedly receiving punishment after making a similar style of defense. People laugh from the outside, but these files involve session records, IP analysis, device matching, platform data and technical examinations. Saying “I didn’t do it” alone is rarely enough. You also need to know what exactly you are denying and where the technical gaps exist.
Criminal law still contains one principle that protects people: the burden of proof belongs to the accuser. The system is not supposed to operate on “go prove your innocence.” If you accuse someone, you must properly prove it. Not with feelings. Not with assumptions. Not with “probably.” We even have a Latin principle for this: in dubio pro reo. People think it sounds fancy. It actually matters a lot. The meaning is simple: if doubt remains, the defendant benefits from it.
Trying to defend digital crime files without understanding technology also creates unintentionally funny situations. Like someone reviewing espresso without ever drinking coffee before. Or someone who never touched an iPhone suddenly explaining an “Apple victimization theory.” They do not know what session records are. They do not know what two-factor authentication is. They do not know what NAT IP means. Yet they speak with complete certainty inside a digital criminal investigation. I’ve seen that too.
That’s why legal work became weirdly multidisciplinary. Statutes alone are no longer enough. Sometimes you work half like a lawyer and half like an IT team. You read IP logs. You examine timestamps. You review company responses. You analyze session behavior. Social media investigations no longer move in a straight line the way people imagine from the outside.
As investigations move forward, the inside of the file slowly starts changing. From the outside people think: “The account is obvious.” “A report already exists.” “The U.S. identified the suspect.” Then you open the file and the reality looks very different.
In one of the files we followed, even the prosecution eventually had to admit this: although the account appeared to belong to the defendant, there was still no reliable proof showing that the defendant personally made the upload. No proper digital examination had been conducted. It was unclear whether the content was publicly visible. It was unclear whether the upload originated from the defendant’s own device. Result? The prosecution itself requested acquittal.
Many people treat digital evidence as absolute truth. I still support the presumption of innocence in the “digital evidence vs defendant statement” debate. Time records shift. Sessions remain open on other devices. Data arrives incomplete. Automated systems flag content without truly understanding user behavior. NAT IP appears without port mapping.
Sometimes we ask courts to issue formal requests to the platforms themselves. We ask for raw data. Session logs. Visibility settings. Access records. Sometimes there is a long silence afterward. Sometimes we discover that the report was generated mostly through automated flagging systems rather than direct human examination. Yet from the outside, people hear “international report” and instantly assume the matter is already solved.
Then comes the translation side of things. That area occasionally turns into pure tragicomedy. In one file, prosecution documents openly stated: “Translated with Google Translate.” Literally. The report said “U.S.” somewhere in the original text. The automatic translation interpreted it as “us.” As if the suspect personally replied “us.” Actual tragicomedy.
At the end of the day, one of the hardest parts of social media investigations is trying to explain something that never happened in the first place. That is not easy. But proper technical reading, proper defense strategy and actually understanding the inside of the file can completely change a person’s life and the direction of a criminal proceeding.
In dubio pro reo.
Onur PUĞ Attorney at Law
