Last month, a judge threw out the actor Justin Baldoni’s $400 million defamation lawsuit against his former co-star Blake Lively. From the way many online spectators have treated her, you’d think she was the one who was losing.

The ruling was part of a legal saga that began when, just after the release of Ms. Lively and Mr. Baldoni’s film, “It Ends With Us,” in 2024, something odd happened: The typical junket interviews and online chatter about the film turned against Ms. Lively, casting her as bossy, flippant and difficult. In December, Ms. Lively filed a legal complaint against Mr. Baldoni and his team of hired publicists, claiming that the bad P.R. was, at least in part, coordinated by them after she spoke up about on-set sexual harassment. According to her complaint, they had orchestrated a smear campaign using tabloids and social media. (A lawyer for Wayfarer, the studio of Mr. Baldoni and his producer, has called Ms. Lively’s claims “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious.”)

Mr. Baldoni, in turn, sued her and her husband, the actor Ryan Reynolds, for defamation and lost. (His suit against The New York Times for covering her complaint was also dismissed.) But the damage was already done. She has been caught in a storm of public discussion about her appearance, her personal relationships and whether she was acting mean during press junkets.

Her experience is fast becoming a matter of course in high-profile cases involving accusations of sexual violence or harassment. Public figures who speak up now can face retaliation and recrimination not just from the people they said abused them but also from an online public that’s thirsty to see them torn apart.

We saw this before. Remember how Amber Heard was treated during Johnny Depp’s defamation case against her?

Throughout Ms. Heard’s trial, YouTube channels uploaded hundreds of videos that were eligible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising revenue; her lawyer argued that “lopsided” social media coverage played a role in her eventual defeat. Now what Ms. Lively’s legal filings suggest is that at least some of the drama surrounding high-profile celebrity imbroglios can be essentially cooked up and then amped up. Drama is a calculated strategy, designed to cast public doubt on accusers’ claims and tarnish their reputations, while also grabbing eyeballs. It seems inevitable that this environment will deter other women from coming forward.