And it’s not just wine reviews with content like “this wine smelled bad.” Imagine, for example -
A wine review that went on to say “this wine was so bad, clearly the winemaker has no idea what he or she is doing.”
A winery gets cited for an environmental or permitting violation and there is a big discussion with numerous assertions being made about what did or did not happen, what those things say about the character of the owner, whether decent people should buy their wines, etc.
A ring making counterfeit wines is busted and there’s a discussion about which distributors or retailers may have sold fake bottles, what they are and are not doing about investigating, giving refunds, whether they turned a blind eye or even were knowingly complicit, etc.
A claim that a particular retailer leaves wine deliveries out on the sidewalk directly in the hot summer sun for hours at a time before finally bringing them all in, or a claim that wines sold by a particular retailer or importer show signs of heat damage way too often, leading the poster to conclude that those wines aren’t properly handled or stored to protect the wines against excessive temperatures.
An infamous counterfeiter of auction-worthy bottles goes to jail and as his story is revealed there is robust discussion about who aided and abetted him, which auction houses or other market participants knowingly or with willful ignorance sold the counterfeit wines, which buyers of the fake bottles then nevertheless tried to resell the fakes they got stuck with, knowing they were likely fakes and taking steps to obscure their sources. Perhaps that discussion would even develop into spotting seemingly fake bottles still being offered at auctions today, and occasionally calling folks out for not spotting the fakes or even knowingly trying to pass them off as real.
Now, maybe all of those examples are wildly unrealistic, but in theory any or all could come up on a wine board like this. Without 230, anyone who wanted to sue alleging such posts are defamatory could sue Todd/WB in addition to or instead of the person who wrote the post in question. And all of these examples are at least potentially actionable enough to survive a motion to dismiss, as opposed to a lawsuit over a pure matter of opinion like a positive or negative wine review.
Having said that, typically people choosing defendants want to go after the money and so companies like Facebook or Twitter are much more likely to be targets of such suits than private citizens who run one website as a hobby and don’t make enough to quit their day job. So it’s unlikely that a website like this would be seen as an attractive target if the goal is to recover a significant amount of money. OTOH, all it takes is one person who’s just ticked off enough, and just vengeful enough to want to shut the site down even without recovering any money and it’s not that hard to run up the costs of defense to the point that running the website just isn’t worth the cost and potential liability.
So, yeah, I think it could affect this site.