Smith v. Substack, Inc.

I. BACKGROUND

Smith alleges a California state law claim for negligence against Substack arising from an article posted on the Cancel Watch (“CW”) blog. Dkt. 21 (FAC) ¶ 7. An author identified only as John Doe posted an article about Smith on the CW blog. Id. ¶ 7. Substack hosts the blog. Smith

1 Under Williams v. King, all named parties must consent to magistrate judge jurisdiction for the undersigned to “enter dispositive decisions.” 875 F.3d 500, 503–04 (9th Cir. 2017); see 28 U.S.C. § 636(c). Other courts in this district have found that unidentified Doe defendants don’t factor into this determination. See, e.g., RingCentral, Inc. v. Nextiva, Inc., 2020 WL 978667, at *1 n.1 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 28, 2020); Zaragoza-Rios v. City of Concord, 2019 WL 2247856, at *1 alleges that Doe threatened Smith on social media with a “‘massively embarrassing’ article” alleging Smith “is or was a neo-Nazi” if Smith did not “delete four articles on the website RationalWiki.” Id. ¶ 7. Smith did not yield to the alleged blackmailer’s demands, and the embarrassing article was published on the CW blog. Id. ¶ 8. The blog post was “edited on July

and July 11” with additional statements. …