Photo Credit: Gamma
Gamma has officially filed a lawsuit to determine who’s behind the “coordinated, malicious, and ongoing campaign targeting” it and co-founder Larry Jackson via the LarryJacksonExposed and GammaExposed websites.
By now, many are well aware of the “anonymous campaign,” which kicked off with the late-April launch of the mentioned sites. And while we don’t know precisely why the responsible individual(s) are waging “reputational warfare,” as reiterated in the suit, the episode initiated amid Jackson’s and Gamma’s controversial decision to revive Kanye West’s career.
We do know that the sites’ allegedly “false and defamatory” claims appear to be directly affecting the plaintiff – referring, in the company’s own words, to ongoing “damage to Gamma’s reputation and goodwill in the music and entertainment industry.”
(A few of LarryJacksonExposed’s many allegations: Gamma co-founder Ike Youssef “has reportedly reached a breaking point” with Jackson; Jackson’s “actual authority at Gamma is far below what his title and public image suggest”; and Mariah Carey’s “team is still upset due to the fake D2C purchases that were made for her album.”)
Finally, in terms of what we know about the alleged “injurious falsehoods,” the complaint confirms that Gamma, despite having presumably pulled out all the stops, has thus far failed to identify the culprit(s).
“Gamma has conducted a thorough investigation into the campaign,” but “has been unable to determine the identity of the person or persons who created the Websites without legal process,” a relevant line reads.
Beyond the sites themselves, Gamma is of the belief that organizer(s) utilized “a coordinated network of bot accounts on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit to artificially amplify the defamatory content.”
(Unsurprisingly, the accounts look to be relatively new, generic and more or less uniform, free of identifying information, heavy on crypto references, and shielded by VPNs.)
Against this backdrop, the business is specifically suing for defamation, trade libel, unfair competition, and, of course, “to unmask the perpetrators and hold them accountable.”
Time will tell whether the litigation (or a different source) reveals the party or parties who rolled out LarryJacksonExposed. But in its most recent update, the site, which is encouraging visitors to send along donations as well as “receipts, screenshots, or inside information,” called out Jackson’s wife, who was previously Kim Kardashian’s personal assistant.
According to the update, the individual is allegedly “a critical operative in the ongoing project of keeping Kanye West managed and contained within Kardashian-controlled orbits” via Gamma, which on April 30th released North West’s “#N0rth4evr.”
As for the situation’s bigger-picture significance, is the era of smear campaigns upon us?
Time will tell. But Jackson is hardly the only industry exec with serious enemies, and thanks to AI, pumping out websites is easier than ever. Throw in a dash of alleged insider knowledge, a handful of attention-grabbing claims, and some media coverage, and you’re left with an easy-bake recipe for causing massive PR headaches.
