I recall as a child being brought into ridicule by comments incised into a door at my school.

The group who cared about that was more or less the group who could see the door. If the comment had been on a website the harm would not have been any greater.

It's easier to take down a website than a door; the school even claimed it didn't have the budget to expunge the graffiti.

Digital harm is much easier to promulgate anonymously, says Burrows. I don't know that that contention holds much water either. Journalists frequently encounter word-of-mouth allegations whose source is unknown. Gossip in any medium quickly outruns the threads of reliable attribution.

The best we can do is seek attributable corroboration of the rumour and, of course, ask for comment from the party about whom the allegation is made. Failure to do that is a fault of society, not technology.