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Yelp Ordered To Identify User Accused of Defaming a Tax Preparer (bloomberg.com)
mi writes: California State Appeals Court ruled this week that Yelp can't shield the identify of an anonymous reviewer who posted allegedly defamatory statements about a tax preparer. "The three-judge appeals panel in Santa Ana agreed with Yelp that it could protect the First Amendment rights of its anonymous reviewer but it still had to turn over the information," reports Bloomberg. "The panel reasoned that the accountant had made a showing that the review was defamatory in that it went beyond expressing an opinion and allegedly included false statements."
If you reveal your identity to someone in order to post a comment, then you really shouldn't expect to be beyond the reach of the law. You need to be logged in to post a Yelp review, so *obviously* you're not *really* anonymous.
But seriously, the line between free speech and defamation isn't really that hard to navigate. You can be pretty offensive without libeling anyone.
"This advisor is a worthless waste of space. He is personally obnoxious, morally repugnant, mentally negligible and physically repulsive. Merely by breathing he pollutes the good clean air of his city; in a just world, he would have been aborted and his mother done penance for conceiving him." - This is completely fair comment, protected speech. Nobody can sue you for posting this.
"This advisor told me I could still file a XD-426 two days late and it would still be accepted" - now that is an alleged statement of fact, not an opinion, and you damn' well better be able to back it up.
Anonymity is a goal, it is not something you can declare.
Just like a secret is not a thing that you told people not to tell anybody; that's only an attempt at secrecy. If it is actually secret depends on if they actually tell anybody.
So for example a legally-protected Trade Secret, you have to keep it secret. It only protects you if somebody violates the law (including civil law, such as a contract) in disclosing it. But if you forget to make somebody sign an NDA and they tell everybody, guess what? It stopped being a secret as soon as you told them!
A lot of people believe, "If I can't see them, they can't see me" and so when they go online, they think they're anonymous; after all, they can't see any of the people with access to their activities!
If you don't want your publisher to be exposed to lawsuits intending to unmask your identity, don't tell your publisher your identity! In this case, that would mean both lying about your name, and also using a VPN.
Personally, if I say your business sucks online and you want to sue me over it, I wouldn't want to hide behind anonymity, I'd want to roast you in the media for it really hard. People don't like it when businesses do that, it is very bad PR!