Libel vs slander

What libel is

Libel is a defamatory statement recorded in a fixed form. Print, writing, a photograph, a caption, a sign, a web page, a Google review, a Reddit comment, a group email, a text message. The common thread is permanence: the statement exists after the moment it was made, it can be read by people who were not there, and it can be produced later as evidence. Cornell Law's entry on libel sets out the traditional definition and the way courts have extended it from newspapers to everything that followed, and it is a useful place to start if you want the doctrine rather than the summary.

That permanence is why the law has always treated libel as the more serious form. A remark evaporates. A page sits at an address, gets indexed, gets quoted, and can be found by anyone who searches your name three years later.

What slander is

Slander is defamation spoken aloud and not recorded. A false accusation made at a board meeting, on a phone call, in a shop, at a conference. It is defamation, it is actionable, and it is genuinely harder to bring, because the evidence usually consists of what people remember hearing. Cornell Law's entry on slander sets out the traditional categories and the damage rules attached to them.

Written vs spoken, and the practical differences

	Libel	Slander
Form	Fixed and recorded	Spoken and transitory
Typical setting	Article, review, post, email, caption	Conversation, meeting, phone call, remark
Evidence	The statement itself, timestamped	Witness recollection
Damages at common law	Often presumed	Usually had to be proved, unless the statement was slander per se
Typical online status	Almost everything	Rare

Where the libel and slander line blurs

The fixed and spoken categories were drawn before broadcasting existed, and courts have never fully agreed on what to do with a medium that is spoken but permanent. A podcast, a livestream, a recorded video, a voice note: each is speech in the ordinary sense and a recording in the legal sense.

States have resolved this differently. Some treat broadcast defamation as libel by statute. Some distinguish between a prepared script, which looks like writing, and unscripted remarks, which look like speech. Georgia went so far as to coin a separate term for it. There is no single national answer, and a number of states have simply merged the two categories into one claim called defamation, which removes the question altogether.

For anything typed into a browser, though, the answer is not close. A review, a comment, a post and a blog entry are all written and all fixed. They are libel.

What both forms of defamation require

The label changes procedure and damages. It does not change what has to be true for a claim to exist. In both cases the statement has to be a statement of fact rather than opinion, it has to be false, it has to have been communicated to at least one person other than the claimant, it has to be about the claimant, the speaker has to have been at fault in making it, and it has to have caused harm.

Those elements, and the defences that defeat most claims, are set out on what is defamation of character. They are where almost every real case is won or lost. Truth is a complete defence in both branches, which means a review that is accurate is not actionable no matter how much damage it does.

What this means when the defamation is online

Three things follow, and they are the useful part of the distinction.

First, the classification question usually answers itself. If it is on a screen and it stays there, it is libel, and you can stop researching the difference.

Second, the person who wrote it is the defendant, not the website that hosted it. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act means a platform is not treated as the publisher of what its users post, which is explained on what is Section 230 and applied to reviews specifically on Section 230 and online reviews.

Third, winning a defamation case and removing a search result are separate projects. Search engines run removal on their own policies, not on liability, and Google Search Central on removing information from Search describes those routes and their limits in Google's own words. A court judgment may persuade a platform to act. It does not automatically compel a search engine to delist anything.

If a statement about you is online

1. Preserve it first. Capture the page with its URL and the date, before anyone edits or deletes it.
2. Separate the factual assertions from the opinions. Only the factual ones can be false.
3. Check the platform's published policy. A policy violation is removed free, usually within days, and it does not require a legal theory at all.
4. If the statement is a false assertion of fact and the harm is real, speak to a defamation lawyer licensed in your state. Limitation periods for defamation are short in most states, often shorter than for other claims.

None of this is legal advice, and the outcome of a real claim depends on the law of your state and facts nobody can assess from a web page. What this page can do is point you at the primary sources so you can read them yourself rather than take a summary on trust. Whether your situation is a legal question or a search question is usually the first thing worth settling, and it is the first thing a reputation audit establishes.