Hi,

I hope i am posting in the correct thread.

I worked past 2 months on a new free website which will allow to see people involved in poker who have been exposed as scammers by the poker community. I see it as a database of scammers, since a lot of the posts/tweets/videos get forgotten or lost and people get cheated over and over again by the same people. I got the idea from Jeff Gross/Patrick Antonius podcast and decided to work on it. It will be community driven project since apart from coding changes and manual verifications, i will not be adding any scammers to the page unless i get cheated by someone of course.

Adding a submission for a new scammer requires for a user to be logged in to avoid any spams. Also each submission will go through a manual verification to ensure there is no threatening/racist/homophobic etc language used. Also, there is the notion of scammer rating, so if someone's rating is higher that means that more users have voted for this person to be a scammer. This will effect in him/her placed higher on the page to be more noticeable.

Anyways, this is the link - https://pokerscammers.exposed/. I have also created a twitter account - https://twitter.com/PokerScammers.

Any feedback is welcome.

I will be working in the future on any good suggestions or any issues that occur. I may add some ads in the future to offset the infrastructure costs as well.

From the first page of NVG you can already add Mike Postle, Scott Ball, Jenny “Savage” Laing, and Natasha Barbour

If you haven’t already, I would speak to an attorney about how vulnerable you’re opening yourself up to be for libel.

This was done few years ago allready imo? Or was it someone owing people money site? But calling people scammers on a dedicated site doesn't sound like a good idea.

Exactly. There are way too many to list anyways. Believe me when I say this, for every 'known' scammer there are 50 more. And based on the fact that the high profile ones like Eli and Chino still are celebrated and when they make a deep run in a tournament nobody says a peep? I don't even give a **** anymore because nobody does a damn thing about it anyways.

Definitely not going to result in lawsuits.

I haven't spoken directly to an attorney, but I have done a research and added terms and conditions regarding contribution licensing https://pokerscammers.exposed/terms-and-conditions.

That's the reason why I wouldn't start adding accusations I find on forums or social media, but let the community do it and it's their responsibility to ensure they are not adding false information.

bro you can't slander peoples names if there is no legit court ruling. everyone on the list will come at you with defamation letters.. eg. me and all my buddies don't really like berba21 so we get together to come up with a fake story, we all collude and vote you up the ranks to your site. do you think this is a fair system? whether your hearts in the right place or not, everyone needs to be treated as innocent until proven otherwise it becomes a sh*t show.

I suppose I haven't thought of every legal aspect, but how does that compare to just posting on a forum here? Is it not the same? it's still the internet.

lol ya think?

Ah, well in that case you should be fine.

Why would he be open to slander with just creating a website?

The person who would be engaged in the slander is the one who posts it.

For example, if you slander on Yelp, yelp is not responsible. The person who does it is.

I’m not a lawyer but I believe there are different rules for different types of sites. Social media sites have virtually zero liability for anything and I’m guessing Yelp considers itself social media for that purpose. Forums and other sites with user bases that are allowed to upload content do not have the same luxuries as social media sites.

But again, I’m not a lawyer and your question shows why it’s a good idea to talk to one before embarking on an endeavor such as this.

https://www.pokerscammers.exposed/terms-and-conditions

If you look at point 6 and 7, it mentions Contribution license and how the site/company is not liable for any legal actions against user contributions.

Have you run that by a lawyer versed in internet libel laws to see if it protects you?

Given all the possible legal ramifications that have been mentioned, my question would be...why? What is your site offering/going to offer that isn't already looked after elsewhere?

Also, do I need to create a login to be able to get search results, or is there no one in the database yet?

The database is empty yes, since there are no users.

I contacted a solicitor today and they said point 7 is well drafted and provides protection against being sued.

I created the website mainly for my own entertainment and thought it would be useful way to collect all that information that is scattered all over.

I enjoyed developing it purely from the technical front. Never intend to make money out of it, spend money on marketing or spend considerable amount of time on it, since everything is pretty much automated.

Given all the discussed legal ramifications though that may occur, I am beginning to doubt my initial intentions. The last thing I would want to do is to be involved in a lawsuit for a hobby project I created even if I'm legally protected.

Admirable attempt, but I'd recommend to cancel your project right here

You cannot replace the law and find people guilty of crimes based on whatever type of evidence you have and think you will not run into legal issues yourself

Nah. just pivot to "Poker Saints Exposed"

Your new and improved site will allow people to come on post good things that a poker player has done for others or society. One benefit of this is you will need very little if any storage for your database and I am quite sure the URL is available

p.s. like you said good exercise for you. since it seems you have some entrepreneurial blood and have some tech skills , I'd suggest listening to this episode of "How I Built This" podcast interview with Rich Barton.

He was product manager for MS-DOS 5.0 at Microsoft but more importantly started Expedia, Zillow and Glass Door. You might find some nuggets of info in the interview that inspires you for some other exercise that might lead to something. There's a theme(s) to all of his success which is not unrelated to what you were doing with your scam website.

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/11/1005526927/expedia-zillow-rich-barton

FYP

I'm not a lawyer. But I watched the whole series of the good wife and better call saul.

I'm my opinion you are fine. So go for it.

TheDirty is and has been up for a while, pretty sure they even beat a lawsuit. This is no different.


I'd still consult a lawyer.

I did consult a lawyer and they were positive point 7 from the Terms and conditions protects me legally.

For the moment, I will keep the site running and see if it gets any users/submissions. I will not start to aggressively market it.

Do we have any side bets going on yet on the top 10 scammers on the list?? Assuming Postle will be number 1.

You’re welcome to buy pokerscammers.com from me for $10k usd. Here’s a thread to help you get started!

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...67/?highlight=

That seems a little low...I've heard pages that generate this warning from Norton usually go for at least double.