“I wanted everyone … to see this man’s face. Beware of him, he is a manipulator, he is a gaslighter. He is a grifter,” said Crystal, 38, in one video, in which she explained discovering the names of the other women on the various streaming services he was using. In another post, she said: “He told all of us that he was not sleeping with anyone else. Mhmm. Multiple times.”
But women who attempt to protect other women in this manner also open themselves up to backlash, including legal risks, even if they don’t fully identify the man. In one of Crystal’s most recent TikToks on the topic, she begins: “Today, I received a cease-and-desist in my inbox about my TikToks.” A copy of the document viewed by CNN Business calls on Crystal to refrain from “further defamatory conduct on social media” of her ex, including posts about direct messages “intended to cause reputational injury” or videos of him.
Some women view such cases as cautionary tales for how men may seek to quash women’s speech about the nature of intimate encounters that they believe is untrue and damaging. Women who spoke to CNN Business about sharing about bad dates online, whose last names are being withheld to protect the privacy of parties involved, recalled anonymous comments in response to their posts threatening legal action. There has also been at least one lawsuit, in the case of a journalist who started a now-infamous list of allegedly bad men in the media industry.
While Crystal hasn’t used her ex’s full name, legal experts say there could still be risks to this kind of posting, as underscored by the Depp-Heard defamation trial.
“Even when you speak literally true statements, the fact that a man can say, ‘People are going to draw inferences about this …,’ it’s incredibly chilling,” said Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the University of Miami’s School of Law.
The Depp-Heard verdict, Franks said, “really seems to be sending a message to women that they’re just not allowed to speak about abuse anywhere, in any form — whether they name them or don’t name them, whether they’re specific or not specific, it doesn’t matter.”
Crystal, however, told CNN Business that she doesn’t believe she has overstepped: “This is the beginning of the movement and I’m so happy I’m on the forefront.”
In search of a safe space for women online
For years, women have tried to find ways to create tech-enabled whisper networks that could serve to protect other women from bad experiences with men they’d encountered — with mixed success.
Attorney Roberta Kaplan is representing Donegan in her case. Kaplan is the co-founder of Time’s Up, the organization which grew out of the “Me Too” movement , but resigned from the group in August 2021 over her ties to former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Now, this mission lives on through both public and private social media efforts. In these groups, women seek support after painful experiences, warn others of predatory behavior and ask for advice on everything from safe locations for a first date to dating app opening lines.
Such groups may have unintended consequences, such as other group members taking matters into their own hands to track down a person to send critical messages or men losing privacy when they are proactively posted about as women seek to ensure they will be safe should they go on a date with them. Still, some online safety experts say the groups can act as a stop-gap measure for when dating apps — which still struggle to address harassment and other problematic behavior, such as the creation of multiple profiles under different names — fail to keep women and other marginalized groups safe.
“You see a lot of mischief online in ways that torment and exploit the privacy of women, girls and minorities … [and yet] we’re gnashing our teeth when people are using online tools to protect themselves,” said Danielle Citron, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and director of the LawTech Center. “I’m not saying that this is the way to do it … but when you have no other alternative, when you don’t have accountability, people take self-protective measures into their own hands.”
Paola, who asked that her last name be withheld for privacy and safety reasons, said she was motivated to create private online forums to help facilitate this type of information-sharing about dating experiences among women. Some of these groups count thousands or tens of thousands of women as members. Due to the nature of dating apps, she said, people “can easily get away with … hurting girls, cheating, lying and all that stuff.”
“It’s very needed, something to prevent that,” she said. But as more and more women join her groups, some men have learned they’ve been the subjects of some of their posts. . Then come takedown requests and legal threats, directed at both members and the groups themselves.
Risks for women from posting, and not posting
In May, a woman named Eden posted on TikTok about a man her friend had dated. After briefly ghosting her friend and following a text conversation about the status of their relationship, the man is said to have sent Eden’s friend a video of himself buying another woman a bagel and the emergency contraception pill, Plan B. Neither of their faces were shown in the video.
“Girl, I don’t know who you are in this video but run,” Eden said in the TikTok, which has roughly 70,000 views, noting that not only was the woman in the video being filmed, but the video was also being sent to other women whom the man had recently slept with.
Eden made clear in a follow-up post that she never intended to “out” the guy, but rather wanted to warn others with just enough information to glean who he was if they were already interacting with him. This is often the approach such online whisper networks take — share information (age range, neighborhood, job industry) with which someone who knows the person could identify them, but others couldn’t.
Still, someone purporting to be the man in question commented on Eden’s TikTok, threatening legal action. “You leave me little choice but to levy in brutal legal retaliation,” the comment said.
Her friend, who also spoke to CNN Business about the TikToks, said having Eden post about her experience provided a “protective barrier” to backlash but she felt it was important to make the incident public. “I hated the idea of knowing that [the woman in the video] had no idea what was going on behind the scenes or how he was treating other people,” she said.
“Men can do really sh***y things and we have to question ourselves like, ‘Is it worth speaking up about?'” Eden told CNN Business. She said it is an example of how women often must weigh the risk of legal, reputational and other potential consequences against the various reasons they might want to share their personal experiences, including to help other women.
“Obviously, there’s going to be a backlash — almost guaranteed,” said Eden.
Crystal, the hairdresser, similarly told CNN Business that the intent wasn’t to blow up her ex’s life but rather to prevent other women from experiencing what she had with the same person.
She said she was careful not to share too many details about her ex, such as his full name or where he works, but enough information that she feels she’s doing her part to warn others, which she sees as the only real solution.
“I have only told the truth. I will not stop telling the truth,” Crystal said in her TikTok about the cease-and-desist letter. But she has not posted any videos about her ex since she revealed she’d received the apparent legal threat more than a month ago. She told CNN Business she isn’t scared or backing down, though. “Accountability isn’t linear,” she said. “As information comes to me, I will still be posting.”
