If you’ve ever had the luxury of sitting through a one-part-too-long Bravo Housewives reunion, or indeed any other personality-led reality show, you’ll have heard it, the battle cry known to fed up A-Z-listers around the world: “The blogs, the blogs!”

We’re not talking about the bygone millennial era of bashing out our interior monologues to audiences of under 10 people, mind. This is the colossally popular, yet ever more squalid world of gossip blogging, the dubious websites that pop up when you Google “are Kanye and Julia Fox still doing…that?”; the YouTuber celebrity shock jockeys; the social media pages with thousands of posts about the daily activities of the permanently visible; the bugbears of anyone who’s ever been the focus of these platforms’ content.

One of the most well-known celebs to fight what often appears to be a losing battle with these websites and pages is Cardi B, the Instagram star-turned-reality star-turned-multi-award-winning rapper. On Tuesday, after taking YouTube vlogger Tasha K to court for making false claims about her sexual health, drug use, child and career as a former stripper among other disturbing allegations, the rapper was awarded $4million (£2.96m) in damages.

This, of course, isn’t the first time a public figure has successfully sued a publication or platform. Cases like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s 2010 lawsuit against the News of the World, have long shown that tabloids around the world are no stranger to these threats. Even still, Cardi B’s situation feels like it could be the start of a wave of successful suits against any bad faith posts on countless blogs, vlogs and pages that have sprung up over the past few decades, and it could be for the better.

From gossip rags to digital gossip machines, the seedy underworld of the exploitative celeb rumour mill seems to have grown bolder of late, or at least wider in reach and volume. Even celeb goss giants of yesteryear like Ok Magazine rely on Instagram-based gossip pages like The Shade Borough (a UK offshoot of The Shade Room) for some of their stories these days. Though there are numerous “official” platforms, it feels as though pretty much anyone could label themselves a professional blogger.

The Shade Borough, UKgossiptv and many others have come under fire after drawing the ire of public figures, or for instigating drama with claims they post about them.

Smaller pages posting celebrity gossip can be taken down by the platforms that host them if they’re found to violate terms and conditions. Defamation laws differ around the world, but should more celebrities take issue with platforms like Tasha K, we could potentially see another Cardi B situation play out, potentially forcing some blogs to reassess their brazenness and, hopefully, their ethics too.

Recent news of the actress Regina King’s son’s death, for example, was shared by a gossip blog – B. Scott – as an “exclusive”, giving the world the tragic story before the King family had issued a statement.

Though more of a hybrid tabloid and blog, TMZ has also come under fire repeatedly over the years for treating the deaths of celebrities like thrilling scandals. Kobe Bryant’s helicopter death is another example of what happens to the affected families in the rush to be first. As reported in the New York Times after Bryant’s death, “the authorities had not contacted Mr. Bryant’s family before TMZ published its report.”

This isn’t solely about a need to protect celebrities, however. It’s also about the potential to unwittingly spread misinformation. Some platforms showcase a mixture of news and gossip, sometimes posting salacious slants on highly sensitive topics, which are often contentious – and traffic-friendly.

Since the pandemic, many pages either teeter on the edge of promoting conspiracy theories and anti-vax information, or cleverly add caveats that they are simply posting information for “journalistic purposes”. Seemingly undeterred by any threat of litigation and high on the thrill of skyrocketing engagement, those clicks just keep coming in, baby, and in a display of hubris, the rumours, information and reports keep getting more outlandish and legally contentious.

It should be said that I – quite obviously – follow a lot of pages, albeit with the ability to recognise and fact-check false or misleading information when I see it. Crass as they may be, even when they’re not misrepresenting the truth, they’re entertaining and lend themselves well to multimedia content, especially the kind that traditional news outlets tend to be slower to pick up on. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have a duty to be better.

After winning her case, Cardi B tweeted: “I need a chat with Megan Markle”[sic], presumably in a nod to her recent legal wins and ongoing battles. No response just yet, but after their separate success, who knows what havoc a dream team like that could wreak on the celebrity blog world?