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Social Media Expert Witness
With over $90 million in awards and settlements to litigant clients, Chris Silver Smith provides advantageous service as an expert witness.
✓ Social Media Marketing Expert ✓ Background in social media management
✓ Social Strategies + Analytics + Platforms
Frequent Litigation Topics
As an expert witness, Smith has frequently been an expert in cases involving the following areas of civil law.
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Trademark Infringement
Social media trademark infringement involves exposure of the infringing mark, volumes of people who have seen it established through analytics, and sometimes impact on search engine rankings.
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Online Defamation
Libel + slander are often conducted through social media posts, and establishing how publicly visible such posts are and how widely disseminated can help establish a basis for damages.
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Personal Injury
Social media has been a component in a number of PI lawsuits we have worked on. It can indicate state of mind, intent, insurance fraud, and income ability.
Experienced internet marketing & technology consultant
Smith has 30 years of experience with online media, and extensive experience in programming, including managing social media accounts for individuals and companies.
- Headed up a tech department at Verizon, overseeing development on one of the company’s biggest websites.
- Two U.S.P.T.O. patents invented/registered.
- Longtime writer at Search Engine Land & MarTech
- Speaker at many conferences and workshops
- Founder of Argent Media, an internet marketing agency that has managed hundreds of social media accounts for large companies, small companies, and prominent individuals.
- Expert witness for 50+ cases, testifying in multiple State, Federal, and International courts.
Social Media Analytics
Social Media Analytics is a significant element in a number of types of cases that involve social apps and platforms. Some types of analytics are readily accessible with social posts, and some may need to be capably estimated. Either way, you need an experienced expert witness to connect the evidence, explain it to the court, and provide verification of the data.
Chris Silver Smith has experience in collecting, calculating, and estimating social media analytics from multiple platforms.
Analytics Expert
✓ Account Metrics
✓ Post Metrics
✓ Likes, Shares, Views
Samples of Past Social Media Work & Expert Witness Cases
Below are some highlights of social media projects. Smith has worked on Facebook, Twitter/X.com, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Tumblr, Pinterest, Flickr, WordPress, Twitch.TV, Vimeo, LinkedIn, Blogger, LiveJournal, Medium, and more.
Facebook Expert Witness
Chris Silver Smith has worked on multiple lawsuits involving Facebook, Meta’s main social media platform.
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Smith has set up 100+ Facebook pages for companies & individuals
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Provided Facebook forensics on a handful of cases
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Expert on a defamation case involving dozens of posts and thousands of impressions/views from members of the public
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Expert on multiple cases involving trademark infringement and millions of misimpressions of marks in improper contexts
Twitter / X Expert Witness
Chris Silver Smith has worked on multiple issues and lawsuits involving Twitter.
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Smith has set up and managed many dozens of Twitter accounts on behalf of clients, and conducted ad campaigns there
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Served as expert for a company that sued Twitter for unfair trade practices, writing a report involving the platform’s anti-spam rules and its development of its API ecosystem (client negotiated a substantial settlement)
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Forensic investigation for a financial organization in determining if an executive’s Tweet was intentionally defamatory or accidental
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Wrote a definitive article on Twitter’s Ranking Algorithm.
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Provided forensic investigation in a university’s Title IX conflict between professors alleging cyberstalking
Instagram Expert Witness
Chris Silver Smith has analyzed many hundreds of Instagram accounts and posts in multiple lawsuits.
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Provided analysis on the search engine ranking impact of dozens of major influencer posts tying a major brand’s mark to an alleged infringing company’s Instagram account and its webpages.
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Documented hundreds of Instagram posts involving an allegedly infringing trademark, and provided sophisticated calculations to estimate the total resulting misimpressions.
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Investigated accusations of an account manager’s alleged attempts to sabotage an account, and documented evidence of first uses of a mark in a trademark ownership dispute.
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Analyzed dozens of Instagram posts in order to rebut an expert witness report in a trademark infringement case where they were used as evidence attempting to establish evidence of nationwide and local mark recognition.
YouTube Expert Witness
Chris Silver Smith has long-term experience with the optimization of YouTube videos, as well as expert witness work involving videos and accounts on the platform.
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Served as expert in a defamation lawsuit where defamation was conducted in a couple of videos posted on a YouTube account with tens of thousands of followers.
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Provided valuation of a YouTube channel in a case where a financial basis needed to be developed in order to develop damages recommendations for the court.
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Provided expert witness service in a wrongful death malpractice case where a YouTube influencer who had developed a substantial and growing audience died prematurely. The growth of subscribers and views paired with YouTube Partner program revenue payments provided a basis to project the next ten years of lost revenue due to the YouTuber’s death.
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Demonstrated social media optimization strategies by setting up videos advantageously to achieve excellent rankings – resulting in ~200K views of one demo video, and a licensing/distribution deal with a media company for the second video.
Recent Blog Posts 👍 Social Media Legal Notes
Contact us to check conflicts, get rates, and to schedule a call about your case.
Telephone No.+1 (972) 504-5512