Crime and Punishment: How Big Companies Confront Black PR

Black PR, slander and other dirty methods that allow you to survive from the market of competitors and spoil the reputation of brands, public figures, media people, should not get away with the instigators.



The current legislation successfully fights this kind of “info-stuffing”, not allowing attackers to achieve the desired goal - to denigrate the opponent.



Yuri Mosh, the founder of the company "Second Passport", told us about the nuances and subtleties of protecting the brand, the company from defamation and dishonest actions of competitors in the Internet space.

The price of libel - in millions

Defamation is today a criminal offense. The amount of the fine may reach one million rubles. Also in the form of punishment community service is provided.



Defamation means the creation and dissemination of knowingly false information that discredits the dignity, reputation and honor of another person. Any unverified information published on the Internet or spoken publicly can be interpreted as insult and slander.



“Cheaper” for all offenders is “simple slander”; “The dissemination of knowingly false information that discredits the honor and dignity of another person or undermines his reputation” - a fine of up to half a million Russian rubles.



An aggravating circumstance may follow: “using one's official position”, “in a public speech”, “about a dangerous illness”, etc. Especially often the last point is neglected by the media in their statements about the “diseases” of public people, artists, exposing deliberately false information as sensation: Previously, you could go to jail for this item, but now it provides only a fine of up to five million rubles.

Black PR and its implications for business

In 2019, according to experts, the global black PR market is from 400 million to 2 billion dollars. The numbers are large, even though in fact it is a shadow market. Only in Russia campaigns to denigrate brands are conducted in the millions of dollars.



Black PR is a kind of information war. He has many intermediate goals, such as spoiling a competitor’s reputation, weakening his market position at the right time for his opponent, etc. However, the main goal is to become a monopilist.



The question immediately arises, what should the victim do from the actions of black PR specialists? - write a refutation, start a criminal case against a competitor (when his participation is obvious) or ignore the incident?



Today, prosecuting people who spread black PR is not such a difficult task, especially with the help of special IT systems. Tracking an attacker by the same IP address is as easy as shelling pears. Therefore, your first step should be to contact the law enforcement authorities.



You can blame a competitor for black PR and slander if you have irrefutable information evidence indicating the actions of a particular person: his motive, unfair work of his employees / contractors, etc.

How do large companies resist black PR?

Many companies and brands that have suffered from black custom PR are not only looking for the instigator of PR campaigns, but also apply the appropriate actions through the existing legal field. Here are some interesting use cases.



Case 1. The Teletrade company sued the reviews site and won the case



The Teletrade broker, popular on the Forex market, managed to win the case and prove that the negative reviews about its activities on one of the sites were not substantiated and had no evidence. Thus, Teletrade was able to sue the site reviews about $ 10,000 damage + compensation for legal expenses.



In the reviews left on the site, it was said that the company "Teletrade" is a fraudster, and is engaged in the extortion of money from citizens. The amounts of “damage” were different: from 1,000 to 100,000 dollars.



But for the forex broker, a favorable situation has developed on the way to restoring a positive reputation. The fact is that the administration of the site reviews did not conduct proper moderation of incoming comments. The user who left the review was not required to confirm the information presented by him.



The point is not that the reviews were negative, but that they were anonymous and unproven. And verify their authenticity is impossible because of the negligence of the owners of the site. Therefore, they will answer.



According to the court decision, the reviews left on the site for a certain period of time were recognized as unreliable: the identities of the authors could not be determined, and at that time there were no claims against the Teletrade company from deceived customers.



The site of reviews was obliged to compensate the site for damage caused by the dissemination of defamatory and false information about the Forex broker Teletrade and to cover the plaintiff's legal expenses.



Case 2. Alutech vs. black PR specialists: an unprecedented case for Belarusian business



In 2015, Alutech Group of Companies won the lawsuit and through the court obtained the right to delete fake websites / pages containing incorrect product information and damaging its business reputation.



Fraudsters created sites pravdaproalutech.ru, alutechkupit.ru, where the design of web pages included elements of the corporate identity of Alutech: its logo, color scheme and the names of sections, products. The described facts about the products were greatly distorted in favor of the high cost of the product and its manufacture from low-quality materials. This information demonstrated the unreliability of the supplier and defamed the honor of the company.



Obviously, the goal of the customers of the fabricated PR project was to make the end consumer think about the low quality of the product.



Meanwhile, customers began calling the company’s regional offices. They perfectly understood that these were the machinations of competitors and were interested in how the leadership would deal with them.



With the help of the Russian branch, Alutech collected a package of documents, the necessary evidence base, notarized content resources, and filed a lawsuit in one of the Moscow courts. The company’s request was to block the false information resources discrediting Alutech’s reputation, recover the plaintiff’s legal expenses incurred from the violator: state duty, etc., prohibit the registration of website names similar to those mentioned above.



The trial was complex and took place in several stages. Only at the fourth meeting, it was decided to transfer the rights to sites to the plaintiff free of charge.

How to resist black PR and reduce its consequences

In his experience, Yuri Mosh recommends that you fully assert your rights and not go quiet because of the arrogant slander of competitors. At the moment, he is actively fighting black PR and successfully defending his rights in American courts against Yandex and Google in order to remove search engine links with falsified information. Behind there is a wide evidence base that anonymous articles and reviews containing negative and certain “facts” about fraud are lies, the machinations of competitors. Based on the data of official inspections, there was not a single negative review interpreted in Internet resources for that period of time at the company “Second Passport”.



It’s important to remember the simple truth that the more stable the positive image of your brand, the more difficult it is to discredit. You should always be on the alert and systematically monitor the news feed, catching publications mentioning your brand, company, in order to prevent an outbreak of negative for your product.