- Google trends data shows that Hodlonaut’s tweets about Craig Wright did not negatively impact his reputation online
- Wright sued Hodlonaut in 2019, claiming that tweets about Wright being a fraud damaged his reputation in the UK
- It seems however that the person who drew the most attention to the negative material was Wright himself
Hodlonaut’s tweets that Craig Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto, which led to him being sued by the BSV creator in 2019, did not damage Wright’s reputation in the UK, according to Google trends data. Hodlonaut was sued for libel in the wake of the tweets, just one victim of Wright’s lawsuit spree aimed at having a judge confirm that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, but analysis from Twitter user BTCKershi shows that Wright’s reputation in the UK suffered no reputational damage in the UK as the claim suggests.
Tweets by @hodlonaut did not damage Craig Wright’s reputation, and data from Google Trends proves it.
UK libel law is broken. It is shocking things have got this far. It should be obvious to everyone Wright’s lawsuit against hodlonaut is unjustified.https://t.co/5mvdvxTOay
— BTCKershi⚡️∞/21m (@btckershi) September 16, 2021
Negative Searches Did Not Spike After Hodlonaut Tweets
In the lawsuit, served in March 2019, Wright claimed to enjoy a global reputation that suffered damage due to Hodlonaut’s tweets. BTCKershi sought to find online evidence of this reputational damage, assuming that, “If this claim were the case, then there would presumably be online evidence of this negative public attention in the use of relevant terms on internet search engines.”
BTCKershi used Google Trends as his tool of choice, using studies on its efficacy to back up his methodology. He assumed that in the wake of the tweets there would have been more Google searches for Wright with negative terminology, such as the use of the word ‘fraud’ and ‘fake’ and searches for Wright’s name that had negative connotations.
BTCKershi found that Hodlonauts tweets had no impact at all on Wright’s reputation as far as Google went, with the biggest spikes in negativity during weeks following them coming when Vitalik Buterin called him out (Wright sued him, Vitalik ignored it, and Wright let it lapse) and from Wright himself when he said he remembered reading something in the Bitcoin whitepaper before hastily adding “probably when I wrote it”.
Wright the Master of His Own Downfall
In an interesting twist, BTCKershi’s research discovered that the person who drew the most attention to the negative material was…Craig Wright. If it hadn’t been for Wright drawing attention to the tweets, it seemed they would have just sunk into the Twitter swamp with all the other claims of him being a fraud. But then, that wouldn’t serve his purpose of forcing a judge to anoint him as Satoshi Nakamoto.
