[HN Gopher] Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook v...
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Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims'
families
Author : bartread
Score : 339 points
Date : 2022-10-12 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| animitronix wrote:
| Boom, he's on his back!
| norwalkbear wrote:
| Does he even have the money to pay nearly a billion dollars? Or
| is the point to bankrupt him with what seems like lawfare?
|
| America is not a place where people like being told to be quiet.
| Alex Jones went mainstream on the Joe Rogan show. Millions and
| millions of Rogan fans see Alex Jones are legitimized by this
| ruling. Joe Rogan has the biggest podcast in the world.
|
| Just some things to think about. Unintended consequences.
| tptacek wrote:
| Those consequences being what, more people defaming the parents
| of dead children and losing their fortunes as a result? I don't
| think Rogan is dumb enough to make that particular mistake.
| norwalkbear wrote:
| That's a very uncharitable interpretation.
|
| Whether you like it or not, Alex Jones is insanely popular
| and so is Joe Rogan. Their audiences votes and can certainly
| tip elections.
|
| I bet you never thought Trump would win in 2016. I knew that
| race would be close because I understand the mood of average
| Americans better than you.
| lovich wrote:
| What are you implying then? That if someone gets popular
| enough we should all just roll over and let them do as they
| please? I'm failing to see a different interpretation when
| you end with
|
| > Just some things to think about. Unintended consequences.
| norwalkbear wrote:
| Fining him nearly 1 billion dollars is excessive and
| sends a wrong moral signal to the moderate public.
|
| It makes the punishment look unusual and petty.
|
| Can anyone justify why the amount should be that high?
| Does he have 1 billion dollars?
|
| I would have fined him 200million something he might
| actually have.
|
| Using the law to make an example out of someone requires
| moral authority and the population to agree. COVID has
| shown us, America is split on that.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes, it's in fact pretty easy to justify why the amount
| should be that high. My guess is that the distinction
| between 200MM and 900MM is not especially material to
| Jones at this point; either zeroes him out.
| lovich wrote:
| > Can anyone justify why the amount should be that high?
| Does he have 1 billion dollars?
|
| 1) InfoWars wasn't some small blogger or random guy on
| the street. It's a business with 10s to 100s of millions
| in revenue depending on which documents Alex Jones had
| for the day
|
| 2) Alex Jones had the opportunity to defend himself and
| instead either did not show up to his court dates or
| chose the opportunity to continue attacking the
| plaintiffs and doubling down on perjurious statements
| when given orders not to
|
| If anything the "wrong moral signal" being sent here is
| that even when your behavior is not functionally
| different from trying to rack up the highest damage
| amount possible, it's still easily payable by our top
| echelons of society.
| Jordrok wrote:
| Jones's lies were unusual and petty. The punishment
| perfectly fits the crime.
| kornhole wrote:
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I think that is grossly excessive.
| colesantiago wrote:
| I think that it is _not_ grossly excessive _enough_.
| guywithahat wrote:
| The argument is that his supporters harassed sandy hook
| victims, to my knowledge nobody was hurt and certainly nobody
| died from the harassment. If this isn't enough, what would be
| enough? And what would be appropriate compensation if he had
| encouraged violence against them/etc?
| timbit42 wrote:
| No one was physically hurt but they were certainly hurt
| psychologically and financially.
| entiex wrote:
| To the tune of over eighty times the average lifetime
| earnings of an American each?
| advisedwang wrote:
| Infowars has $53MM of revenue, so this is 20 years of revenue
| for knowing, persistant and harmful actions and then misconduct
| during trial. For comparision, 20 years of income for the
| median american is less than a million dollars. I think million
| dollar damages are common even just for negligence, let alone
| this severity.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Despite my strong belief that he be strongly punished for his
| lies, I agree with you. It's so over the top that it discredits
| the whole process for me.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think you should look at the theatrics Alex engaged in
| during the trial as well as his repeated failure to provide
| documents during discovery. He was arguably incompetently
| represented[1] (Infowars is probably going to sue their
| lawyer[2]) while treating the trial(s) as both a joke or a
| conspiracy against him. With that kind of behaviour, I'm not
| sure what kind of outcome he expected - him and his legal
| team failed to mount a serious defence of his actions.
|
| [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alex-jones-lawyers-
| acci...
|
| [2] https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/alex-jones-turning-own-
| lawyers-0...
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I am explicitly not siding with Alex Jones in any way.
| advisedwang wrote:
| You think he should be fined less. That is siding with
| him in result.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Not saying that you are. But if Alex tried to make a
| mockery of the litigation he was facing why is the
| outcome disproportionate in your opinion? Didn't he
| undermine the process with his own actions here?
| entiex wrote:
| They're compensatory damages, not puntive damages. His
| trial behavior should be completely irrelevant, as should
| his level of wealth for that matter.
| donatj wrote:
| diydsp wrote:
| >Calling someone a "crisis actor" is like saying they are from
| Mars and have 3 arms. No reasonable person is going to believe
| it.
|
| I've had to counter that argument from many of my high school
| classmates on facebook. They repeat these statements like sheep
| from Animal Farm.
| CRWW wrote:
| So the extraordinary amount of harassment the families received
| as a result of the crap he was spewing is completely
| meaningless? Sure no reasonable person is going to believe it
| but there are a lot of gullible idiots that eat up everything
| he says. Really easy to say you could shrug it off when your
| family wasn't just murdered.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Alex Jones did a lot more than that. His defaming the families
| of dead kids resulted in his followers and supporters harassing
| those people. The harassers need to be held civilly and
| criminally liable, too. But Jones persisted over years in
| encouraging this harassment.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| While profiting from it and knowing he was lying.
| donatj wrote:
| > encouraging this harassment
|
| Did he actually _encourage_ people to harass them? I haven 't
| heard anything of that, because that changes the story if
| true.
| dfcowell wrote:
| Jones has a rabid following who engaged in a campaign of
| stalking and harassment - including death threats and
| harassment by mail to their homes - against the plaintiffs. It
| went quite a bit beyond one guy saying some mean things.
|
| I think you'd probably find that harder to shrug off.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| In this case there is demonstrable harm here. The Sandyhook
| parents have had their lives threatened and confronted by
| strangers both on the street and in their home due to Jone's
| words - the problem is there were a lot of unreasonable people
| who very much believed Jones and while you claim you would, you
| wouldn't just shrug this off. His accusations made their lives
| unsafe by sullying their reputation with irrational people.
| donatj wrote:
| I don't think holding a person accountable for another
| person's irrational behaviour is reasonable though. If you
| tell me "it's going to rain" and I take that as a call to
| attack people with umbrellas, is that your fault?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Seems like the kind of thing a jury of your peers could
| decide. Kind of like what happened in this case.
|
| It also bears mentioning that the gulf between "it's going
| to rain" and "the parents of murdered children are actually
| 'deep-state' actors aiding a conspiracy to take away your
| rights" is vast.
| donatj wrote:
| Neither contains a call to action.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I don't think that's a great standard. For example if I
| consistently call a group of people subhuman and vermin
| that should not exist I may not have a call to action but
| the ideology I'm promoting is pretty clear. It's not
| unreasonable to hold me accountable when a member of my
| audience decides to attack an individual from the group
| I'm dehumanizing. Nor is it unreasonable for a member of
| that group to sue me.
|
| And again, the grey areas here seem like the kind of
| thing that a jury is able to decide. Alex wasn't found
| guilty by executive order from the president.
| donatj wrote:
| I think it's entirely unreasonable. Having a horrible
| opinion is a million miles away from telling people to do
| horrible things. Prosecuting people for opinions is the
| literal opposite of what a liberal democracy should be
| doing.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| If I send someone to kill you would you consider me
| unaccountable?
| donatj wrote:
| That entirely misses the point. He didn't send the
| people. They acted on their own based on bad information
| he fed them. No call to action.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| But that's not at all what happened. Jones lied in a
| deliberate attempt to provoke harassment of these poor
| people. If owned a radio show and I go on and said you were
| a child rapist and should be stopped by any means necessary
| would you believe me faultless if you got attacked?
| donatj wrote:
| > a deliberate attempt to provoke harassment of these
| poor people
|
| That seems superbly unlikely. If that were true, what
| would he stand to gain from that? What did he have
| against these people?
|
| I can't imagine he was just sitting there chuckling
| maniacally "yes yes I'm going to hurt these people who
| just lost their children". That's an imagined cartoon
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| You're right, he may not have done it deliberately for
| the harassment, but he clearly had no qualms about it and
| made no move to stop it when he knew it was happening. He
| deliberately lied, and deliberately spread false, vicious
| claims about the parents.
|
| He makes a living of spreading fabulous and wild lies
| designed to spread fear and anger. In this case, and in
| the context of all those other anger fueling claims, he
| lied and said that the shooting was a false flag, that no
| one died, and that the parents were crises actors who
| faked the death of their loved ones because the state was
| going to use it as an excuse for gun control, and he
| continued to claim it, even after the parents were
| harassed, even after they initially sued him, and even
| went so far as to make accusations about the parents and
| judge on TV during the trial.
|
| What do you believe his goal was? And do you believe
| those claims don't meet the requirement for defamation?
| Again I ask how you'd feel in my proposed scenario, if I
| accused you of being a child rapist on TV, even if I
| didn't say you needed to be stopped, but that you were
| raping children for satan. Would you think that's just
| fine because no one rational would believe it?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Money? His audience eats that shit up. He may not have
| had anything personal against the victims, but he needs
| grist for the mill of the type of content he creates.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > If someone said something about me that was patently
| laughably untrue, something that no sane person would believe,
| I'd just shrug it off.
|
| If it were one ordinary person making those accusations to a
| small group of their friends and acquaintances who also knew
| you and could see for themselves that those accusations were
| false, that'd be one thing.
|
| When the person making those accusations is a celebrity,
| broadcasting those accusations to an audience of _millions_ who
| know nothing else about you, that 's quite another matter.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Does the "reasonable person believes it" test apply when
| numerous people _did_ believe it and engaged in a campaign of
| harassment and threats against the families? Yes, those people
| were not reasonable, but on the other hand since Jones runs a
| snake-oil sales outfit, it 's also notable that these are
| exactly the people he intends to attract. Unstable extremists
| are his target audience.
|
| He professionally cultivates an army of nitwits for profit, and
| then weaponizes them just to keep engaged in his product.
| myko wrote:
| > No reasonable person is going to believe it.
|
| Frankly I agree with you, but there are a lot of unreasonable
| folks-and every InfoWars consumer falls into that category.
| john-radio wrote:
| I don't have a lot of respect for the people who listen to Alex
| Jones or Infowars or believe the content that's published
| there, but the site had (has?) millions of dollars in revenue
| and Jones's podcast had (can't find a reliable source, so
| educated guess:) millions of listeners. So it's quite
| disingenuous of you to say "no reasonable person is going to
| believe it" when millions of people didn't find it so
| unreasonable that they abandoned Jones as a commentator; maybe
| they themselves, are not reasonable, but that doesn't make the
| reputational damage any less of a problem; arguably it makes it
| a lot more of a problem since now these people have to deal
| with violent threats, being SWATted, and so forth due to the
| reputational damage among unreasonable people.
| Taniwha wrote:
| "CIVIL-RIGHTS LAWYER NARRATOR: But punitive-damages awards aren't
| dischargeable in bankruptcy. So Alex Jones will be paying off
| these debts from wage garnishments, attachments, & sheriff's
| sales of his stuff for the rest of his wretched, pathetic,
| worthless life."
|
| from:
| https://twitter.com/SubodhChandra/status/1580285453348921344
| donatj wrote:
| Honest question - could Jones sue Subodh Chandra for defamation
| given that his life was just valued at at least a billion
| dollars by a jury?
| tedunangst wrote:
| Worthless life is clearly opinion.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Pretty sure his life wasn't just valued at a billion dollars,
| but rather the amount of damage he has caused.
|
| But I'll be generous and give that lawsuit a 0.01% chance.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| Counterpoint: Alex Jones' life is now valued at _minus_ a
| billion dollars. So "worthless" would be an inaccurate
| statement because it should actually be "less than
| worthless".
|
| But less tongue in cheek, I think Hamuko's comment has the
| right idea.
| Taniwha wrote:
| Pretty sure it was the jury that decided that
| advisedwang wrote:
| Anyone can sue anyone. But he'd lose.
| tptacek wrote:
| These aren't punitive damages, though the bankruptcy code cite
| there seems really to be about damages from any intentional
| tort. My understanding --- someone has been following this part
| of the case more closely than me and can correct --- is that
| the bankruptcy stuff isn't as much about shielding Jones or
| Free Speech Systems directly as it is about facilitating moving
| most/all of Jones and FSS's assets off their books.
| z7 wrote:
| Whenever X happens there will always be people who believe X
| didn't happen. Society has to find a way to deal with this.
| dolfine wrote:
| Now let's sue every politician and newscaster who defamed Trump
| bruceb wrote:
| This title is so misleading, "to pay" and "told to pay" are not
| remotely the same. There is no chance Alex Jones will pay this
| amount.
|
| Actual headline is: Alex Jones told to pay $965m damages to Sandy
| Hook victims' families
|
| @dang pls fix.
| bartread wrote:
| This is the problem with BBC Breaking News: headlines can
| change. "Alex Jones to pay $965M to Sandy Hook victims" was the
| actual headline when I submitted, but it's now been amended to
| "Alex Jones told to pay $965m damages to Sandy Hook victims'
| families". I literally copy and pasted the original, unedited,
| into the "title" field on the submission page, but there's no
| way for me to update it to reflect the BBC's amended headline.
|
| In an ideal world the title field would auto-populate from the
| page title, which would (at least mostly) work fine on BBC News
| because they're pretty disciplined about keeping page titles
| and rendered titles on the page in sync. But we don't live in
| an ideal world: not all sites do that, and there's no hard
| requirement for them to do so. Plenty will, for example, SEO
| the heck out of the page title such that it doesn't match the
| title rendered _in_ the page. You wouldn 't want to use the
| page title as the HN title in these cases.
|
| So we're left with the current situation where an article's
| title can be updated, but the title on HN isn't. Can't really
| blame either HN or article submitters for that.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Articles report on fines, salaries, etc all the time, often
| with an element of payment in the future. "Facebook fined..."
| and "Facebook told to pay a fine..." have little difference,
| and I don't see many arguing the semantics of those articles.
| nikanj wrote:
| The difference is, Facebook would probably pay the fine. Alex
| Jones probably won't
| Jordrok wrote:
| Good. Fuck him.
| budder wrote:
| So, is there single country in the world that has free speech
| anymore?
|
| How can anyone think his conspiracy theory talk show caused a
| billion dollars in damages for these families?
|
| I wish I lived in a world where it was legal to say whatever you
| wanted.
|
| Socrates and Jesus were killed for "spreading lies" also.
| timbit42 wrote:
| This isn't about free speech. It's about defamation.
| jimcavel888 wrote:
| sterlind wrote:
| Jones stated that the Sandy Hook victims were crisis actors. he
| knew that to be false. it was an egregious case of defamation.
| knowingly spreading lies that damage someone's reputation is
| called slander, and it's not protected by the first amendment.
| neither is shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, or committing
| perjury, or falsifying your income taxes.
| Natsu wrote:
| > knowingly spreading lies that damage someone's reputation
| is called slander, and it's not protected by the first
| amendment
|
| Only in spoken word is it slander. Written it'd be libel,
| whereas defamation covers both. The lies have to be about
| regarding factual matters, not just odious opinions.
|
| > neither is shouting "fire" in a crowded theater,
|
| That's a bad example from an overturned case that created an
| overly broad standard, which is why you shouldn't use that as
| an example of something not protected:
|
| https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-
| ha...
| wyager wrote:
| You're making up a narrative for why suppressing free speech
| is acceptable in this instance, not discharging the notion
| that free speech was, in fact, suppressed.
|
| The fact that a conspiracy talk radio guy can get hit with a
| billion dollar fine for some off-hand nutso claim (that he
| subsequently recanted!) is a very unpromising barometer for
| the health of free speech in our country.
| saltminer wrote:
| > suppressing free speech is acceptable in this instance
|
| Libel, slander, and defamation are _not_ free speech. You
| do not have the right to repeatedly, knowingly, lie about
| someone else, especially when said lies ruin peoples '
| lives.
|
| > billion dollar fine for some off-hand nutso claim
|
| It wasn't a claim, he asserted it as fact, and it wasn't
| just once, he did this up until he got sued, and even made
| up conspiracies about the trials as they were happening.
|
| > (that he subsequently recanted!)
|
| If Jones truly did believe he was correct about Sandy Hook
| being fake, the moment he found out he was wrong, he should
| have delivered a formal apology and begged his audience to
| stop harassing the families of the victims. He should have
| publicly rebuked people like Wolfgang Halbig and any
| callers who talked about the "Sandy Hook hoax" and
| chastised the harassers.
|
| But he never did that. Instead it's "I already said I was
| sorry, I might have been wrong but I'm right like 95+% of
| the time, why are people so angry at me? It's all part of a
| plot by the globalists to shut us down, buy my iodine."
|
| > a very unpromising barometer for the health of free
| speech in our country
|
| So "free speech" is when someone with a significant media
| presence is able to knowingly spread lies about you that
| lead to over a decade of stalking and harassment with no
| recourse?
|
| If you're an American, you might want to consult a lawyer
| on that. Our civil liberties have been heavily curtailed
| over the years, but this verdict isn't threatening anyone's
| rights.
| neaden wrote:
| It wasn't an off hand claim, it was something he
| extensively talked about for years.
| datalopers wrote:
| The fact that you defend this type of measurably harmful
| rhetoric as "free speech" is beyond fucking disgusting.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| His speech isn't being suppressed. The government didn't
| arrest him. He's being sued for damages he caused to the
| families of the victims he lied about. That's as American
| as it gets.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >His speech isn't being suppressed. The government didn't
| arrest him. He's being sued for damages he caused to the
| families of the victims he lied about. That's as American
| as it gets.
|
| I'd add that he is _still_ free to continue lying
| _forever_. _No one_ is stopping him from doing so.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Alex was free to say it and the people he defamed were free
| to sue him for saying it. Alex was free to hire competent
| legal counsel for the trial(s), and he hired a bunch of
| wacky, like-minded nincompoops instead.
|
| There were _so many_ points in this saga where Alex could
| have made decisions that would have made the outcome less
| severe and he doubled down almost every time instead. Even
| as the last trial was wrapping up, he was going on air and
| defaming the judge in the case while calling one of the
| plaintiffs "slow" and a victim of manipulation[1].
|
| There _is_ such a thing as consequences for your actions.
|
| [1] https://news.yahoo.com/alex-jones-railed-against-
| sandy-19364...
| wyager wrote:
| > There is such a thing as consequences for your actions.
|
| A system which produces effects extrinsically equivalent
| to direct proscriptions on free speech is not better than
| a system which explicitly proscribes some speech, and is
| arguably worse, because it tricks credulous people into
| thinking it's not as bad.
| lovich wrote:
| Do you believe there is any kind of speech that is
| appropriate to have consequences for, or is there
| literally no line that could be crossed in your world
| view?
| cyral wrote:
| "some off-hand nutso claim (that he subsequently
| recanted!)"
|
| You know this isn't even close to the truth.
| zackees wrote:
| lokar wrote:
| Also the jury could reasonably conclude that he made the
| false statements to enrich himself knowing it would damage
| others.
| budder wrote:
| So you think it should be illegal to speculate?
| criddell wrote:
| Jones didn't speculate, he asserted that the shooting was a
| hoax and the victims on tv were paid actors.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Asserting one's opinion is speculating.
|
| Personally I don't see how you can say he knew it to be
| false given his reputation as a conspiracy theorist.
|
| You can't both think he is crazy and think that he knew
| it to be false, that would assume he is rational.
|
| Hanlon's razor and all that.
| donatj wrote:
| lokar wrote:
| We have a system for that. Juries decide.
| donatj wrote:
| Juries are not mind readers. At best you can get to
| roughly what a rational person would have thought given
| said data, Alex Jones is not rational. It is literally
| unknowable.
| lokar wrote:
| In the context of needed a specific outcome in finite
| time, a legal process can never be certain of anything.
| We depend on process like juries to come to a good enough
| conclusion.
| donatj wrote:
| That's where the phrase "beyond a reasonable doubt" comes
| in though, and I don't believe there was any way that was
| met here.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The phrase "beyond a reasonable doubt" describes the
| standard of proof for criminal conviction as a safeguard
| b/c of the special potential consequences (like
| execution, imprisonment, disenfranchisement, and lasting
| legal disabilities) associated with such conviction.
|
| It has no bearing on a civil defamation suit, where the
| general burden is merely "preponderance of the evidence"
| (i.e., given what evidence each side has presented, what
| the jury finds more likely to be true.)
| Natsu wrote:
| This is actually a legit distinction and a jury could
| base their decision on this. However, the matter is
| entirely up to the jury and in this case they decided
| they did know what he thought and there's not much that
| can be done about it.
|
| It could well be reduced on appeal and it's unlikely they
| can pay that much, however.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That seems tenuous. I don't think anyone can prove what
| Alex Jones believed.
|
| "Prove" in this context means "convince a jury that it is
| more likely true than not"; legal proof is not
| logical/mathematical proof, and, among legal standards of
| proof, the main civil standard ("preponderance of the
| evidence") is lower than the standard required for criminal
| conviction ("beyond a reasonable doubt").
|
| Beliefs and other mental states are _routinely_ proven in
| court under both the criminal and civil standards. The
| arguments that this is impossible rely on concepts of
| "proof" that are not applicable to the legal environment.
| [deleted]
| lurquer wrote:
| So their reputation was worth a billion? Wow. That's quite a
| reputation.
| alvarezbjm-hn wrote:
| Their reputation, their safety, and the emotional damage of
| attacking their loss. There is more to it, but that should
| be enough to reach 1B.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| They have been repeatedly and viciously harassed by those
| who believed Jones' lies. So, yeah, besmirching their
| reputation _is_ worth a billion.
| alkonaut wrote:
| If there ever was such a country, would people want to live
| there? And if they wouldn't, doesn't that just mean it would
| change?
|
| I can't see how some form of free speech absolutism would even
| function.
|
| As for the size of the damages: in the US, weirdly, rich people
| pay more damages because I assume it's also a way of making
| them stop committing the crime and not simply compensation for
| damage done.
| budder wrote:
| Yes, I think people should be able to tweet things like
| "masks do/don't" work without being able to be sued.
|
| It's the same thing with covid. It was made illegal to
| question it
| lovich wrote:
| > It's the same thing with covid. It was made illegal to
| question it
|
| It was not
| dolfine wrote:
| atrus wrote:
| He made hundreds of millions of dollars spreading his lies. He
| shouldn't profit from that, and should be forced to give all
| the revenue to the families he effected with his lies.
|
| You shouldn't be able to profit off of others misery like that,
| get caught out, and then go whoopsy and pay a small percentage
| of all the money you made off of it. That just encourages you
| and others to do it again.
| guilhas wrote:
| But maybe he does not think they're lies. He thinks he is
| spreading the truth. Doesn't that make a difference, from
| lying on purpose for profit?
|
| The same for the people giving him money. They don't care
| what he says, they never believed Sandy Hook was real for
| starters. They give him money because they want to see it
| "uncovered" and investigated from the only "journalist" that
| takes it
| budder wrote:
| Would it be ok if he wasn't profiting from it?
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| No. But it would be less bad.
| chatterhead wrote:
| HN doesn't like these kinds of questions.
|
| You're right - it is OK as long as he's not profiting nor
| has a bullhorn the size of his. Otherwise, Wolfgang Halbig
| would be in the same kind of shit. He isn't.
| jmull wrote:
| HN isn't one guy with coherent views...
|
| But anyway, it's not a very good question because it
| isn't plausibly serious nor logically related to the
| previous post.
| chatterhead wrote:
| When group censorship creates a lack of diversity that's
| exactly what it becomes.
| adamrezich wrote:
| just look at the downvotes man. look at the overemotional
| (protip: use of the word "fuck") posts. the consensus on
| this site is clear.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Jones made money from lying, but remains free of government
| interference. Nobody's killing him or even putting him in jail.
| That's the very definition of free speech.
|
| But free speech doesn't mean speech without consequences. He's
| being sued by the victims of what he said. It's not the
| government doing this, it's the people he hurt, and that's the
| definition of "justice".
| lokar wrote:
| And there is not even any criminal / gov restraint on his
| future speach. He can do it again, and they can sue for
| damage again.
| budder wrote:
| Why does making money change the legality of what he was
| saying?
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Defamation is a thing you can be sued for. The plaintiffs
| successfully sued Alex Jones for defamation. Him making
| money didn't have much to do with that.
|
| In this phase about damages, the economics can be
| considered as a factor. It can also imply his motivations.
| The testimony given in this hearing showed direct
| connections between defaming Sandy Hook victims and money
| made by Alex Jones. He knew it was a money making story
| from the first day.
|
| A true believer might spend their time and money on useful
| evidence instead of crappy photoshops and flashy nonsense.
| Alex Jones wasn't doing that. He was pushing the flashy
| nonsense, calling it evidence, and watching the money roll
| in.
|
| He never really tried to prove his theories because that
| isn't a required part of the grift.
|
| Essentially, he did an illegal thing (defamation) and made
| money by doing that illegal thing. Economic fines and
| damages are pretty common to dissuade people from doing
| illegal things to make money.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| What Jones said wasn't criminal. He's allowed to say what
| he wants. But what he said did cause harm to people. So
| those people are using the same legal system that allows
| Jones to say whatever he likes, to make him fix the damage
| he caused by saying it.
|
| The fact that he made money from it simply helps the judge
| - who is not part of the government executive - understand
| the motivation for what he did. The reason someone did
| something might be a mitigating factor in some cases, but
| this time it's probably aggravating.
| chatterhead wrote:
| Agreed. This is all bullshit lawyer feasting.
|
| Everyone is cool with fundamental erosions of our liberties as
| long as some fat jackass get what he deserves. They will never
| realize people like Trump and Jones are used specifically FOR
| that purpose.
|
| *People downvoting have never heard of Wolfgang Halbig nor do
| they really care. That doesn't jive with their need to virtue
| signal.
| adamrezich wrote:
| fairity wrote:
| Bringing up unpunished propaganda during the Bush era is
| irrelevant when most here would agree that was equally vile and
| punishable. Two wrongs don't make a right.
|
| The predominant perspective here is that free speech should be
| protected, but if you are spreading lies to make a profit,
| society ought to take back that profit. That seems like a
| pretty reasonable take to me, but I'd entertain
| counterarguments if you have any. As for whether the punishment
| here fits the crime, maybe you're underestimating the scale of
| profit he's made off his lies?
| adamrezich wrote:
| > most here would agree that was equally vile
|
| please tell me that I'm somehow misunderstanding you such
| that the actual intent of your post was _not_ to _literally_
| equate someone saying that a few individuals in a tragic
| situation are paid actors, and willfully propagandizing, _on
| a mass scale_ , the _majority of United States citizens_ into
| believing that a _military invasion of a foreign nation_ ,
| which resulted in _plural hundreds of thousands of deaths_ ,
| was justified, based purely upon lies. surely I must be
| mistaken here and you actually intended to convey some other
| message, because I lack the vocabulary and metaphorcraft
| necessary to even begin to break down such a false
| equivalence.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I lack the vocabulary and metaphorcraft necessary to
| even begin to break down such a false equivalence_
|
| Odd given it was your comment, not the one you're replying
| to, that first drew the analogy.
| adamrezich wrote:
| yes, I brought up another event and compared and
| contrasted the two, with the intent of demonstrating how
| the two things are _not_ equivalent, yet the demonstrably
| more impactful media falsehood campaign remains wholly
| unpunished, contrasted with this situation, which is
| being punished rather dramatically. fairity characterized
| these two events as directly equivalent ( "most here
| would agree that was equally vile and punishable. Two
| wrongs don't make a right.").
|
| how's that "odd"?
|
| -- edit, because I'm still Posting Too Fast, somehow: --
|
| with the load-bearing word "equally" removed, your
| response to my post begins:
|
| > Bringing up unpunished propaganda during the Bush era
| is irrelevant when most here would agree that was vile
| and punishable. Two wrongs don't make a right.
|
| what conversation are you trying to have? "bad things are
| bad?" comparing and contrasting formally similar
| situations (media lies) with differing magnitudes
| (independent media organization calling single-digit
| number of individuals lying paid actors vs. an organized
| propaganda campaign that manufactured civilian consent
| for a foreign-soil invasion leading to a six-digit death
| toll) and the outcomes thereof (nearly a billion in fines
| vs. no punishment whatsoever) is not worth discussing?
|
| the point of my post was to demonstrate how unpunished
| coordinated mainstream media lies are, by using an
| example of something that happened in the lifetime of
| nearly everyone who reads HN and basically everyone
| agrees was a concerted effort in _willfully_
| propagandistically disseminating misinformation, which
| resulted in wide-scale death and destruction, completely
| without any punishment of any kind whatsoever, to this
| day. then you compare and contrast that with Alex Jones,
| whom you have been told repeatedly by mainstream media
| outlets is a terrible, terrible person, for defaming
| about a handful of individuals to his audience (which is
| sizable, but not on the scale of "everyone in the US
| paying attention to the news, pre-social media, in the
| 2000s, in the wake of 9/11").
|
| how is anyone supposed to come away from this thinking
| justice has been served in any way?
| fairity wrote:
| You're hanging on to poor word choice, without making an
| honest effort to engage with the actual idea. I'd suggest
| removing the word "equally", and making an honest attempt
| at having a conversation.
| ezekg wrote:
| Tip: You can vouch for the [flagged] [dead] and it may bring it
| back. You have to click the comment timestamp to see the vouch
| option.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Alex Jones to pay $965M to Sandy Hook victims
|
| There is absolutely no way this is going to happen. The BBC are
| delusional.
| RadixDLT wrote:
| hehe now they are just messing with him
| holyknight wrote:
| Does he even have that kind of money?
| fareesh wrote:
| This is a good verdict - defamation in the media is a very
| serious problem. It's unfortunate that it took a person like Alex
| Jones to convince people of it. If anything he should not be
| taken seriously. Those who are taken seriously have gotten away
| with much worse by merely apologizing or correcting themselves
| (as he did as well).
|
| As for the amount - the highest fine paid by Wall Street firms
| for the 2008 crisis was less than $100M. One of those numbers is
| unjust for sure.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think there's a strong case that Alex's apologies were not
| genuine nor would result in changes in future behavior on air.
| Even as the first trial was wrapping up Alex was calling one of
| the plaintiffs "slow" and "manipulated by some very bad
| people."[1]
|
| [1] https://news.yahoo.com/alex-jones-railed-against-
| sandy-19364...
| pdpi wrote:
| The jury in the Texas case awarded the family around $50M, and
| the $965M in this case is a bit over 2x that, at $120M per
| family. So it's definitely a lot higher and I'm curious to see if
| there's anything that caused that.
|
| More importantly, though, is that the Texas damages were split
| into ~$4.5M as compensatory damages (this is the part where you
| make amends for the harm you've caused), and the remaining ~$45M
| as punitive damages (the part where you). Texas has a cap on how
| much you can _actually_ be forced to pay in punitive damages, and
| it is specifically forbidden to instruct juries on the existence
| of this cap, so as to avoid tempting the jury to tack their
| actual punitive damages onto the compensatory damages number.
|
| The amount in this case will almost certainly going to have a
| similar-ish split, and Connecticut is likely to have similar-ish
| laws in place. I'm not sure how this all works, but there's also
| the interesting detail that, if this was just one judgment, the
| punitive damages cap might apply to the aggregate amount rather
| than per plaintiff (So: if there is a $1M cap, does that mean he
| pays no more than $1M, so each family gets $125k, or each family
| can't get more than $1M, and he pays $8M).
| tptacek wrote:
| No. In the Texas case, Jones lawyers successfully convinced the
| jury to award relatively low compensatory damages and to hammer
| him, if that's what they wanted, in the punitive damages phase.
| In Connecticut, Jones lawyers failed catastrophically to
| accomplish the same thing. The entire $965MM in this case is
| compensatory; we haven't reached punitive damages yet. Notably,
| the torts involved in this case don't appear to have capped
| damages in Connecticut.
|
| (I have no particular reason to believe this verdict will stand
| unchanged, but whatever happens to knock the damages down, it
| will be something very different than what happens in Texas,
| where state _and_ federal law caps punitive damages in relation
| to the underlying compensatory damages).
|
| The other obvious difference between this case and Texas is
| that there are many more plaintiffs here.
| jbrr wrote:
| > Connecticut is likely to have similar-ish laws in place
|
| NAL, but according to the New York Times, this doesn't appear
| to be the case.
|
| > This case presented the greatest financial risk to Mr. Jones,
| because he was found liable of violating Connecticut's Unfair
| Trade Practices Act, by using lies about the shooting to sell
| products on Infowars. There is no cap on punitive damages under
| that law.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/12/us/alex-jones-verdic...
| holyknight wrote:
| does he even have that kind of money?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Bad headline. The jury ordered Jones to pay this; the headline as
| written suggests he made a commitment to do so, which is untrue
| (he plans to appeal). 'Alex Jones must pay' or 'Alex Jones
| ordered to pay' would be more meaningful.
| kevstev wrote:
| This is the third comment in this thread along these lines-
| Isn't this just splitting hairs? Is there any significant
| percentage of defendants in such cases that have judgements
| like this against them that don't actually appeal and just
| write a check on the spot?
|
| I am asking honestly here- I am not sure if this is just
| typical engineer type "well actually..." type stuff going on,
| or if some attempt to downplay and discredit the judgement.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| No, it's just the semantic ambiguity. I think more people
| should rewrite HN headlines for clarity when they're
| confusing (in this case, the BBC subsequently changed the
| headline but it doesn't auto-update on HN).
| mdp2021 wrote:
| It is much simpler: one is expected to just copy the original
| unless there are very valid reasons to edit it...
|
| Edit: the submitter explained -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33183697 - that the
| original title at the time of submission is the given one; the
| target news agency then edited the page. Oh well - some
| possibility for which we must take a mental note.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I believe the person did so but then the BBC edited their own
| headline later.
| jpttsn wrote:
| Curious: What kind of tax would I pay in the US if I became a
| multimillionaire off compensation for my damaged reputation?
|
| Also, could I make a deduction for my damaged reputation based on
| this sort of calculation/figure?
| maest wrote:
| One surprising thing (at least for me) that I don't see anyone
| talking about in the comments is: I had no idea Alex Jones had
| that much money.
|
| That's 1 billion dollars in damages.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Damages are not about how much money you have. It's about how
| much damage you've caused.
|
| It would not be hard for me to go out into the world and cause
| more damage that I can afford to repay.
|
| I don't think Alex Jones has that much money.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Infowars is wildly profitable. Financial records in a previous
| trial revealed that their revenue was sometimes as much as
| $800,000/day.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/05/us/alex-jones-finances.ht...
| bogwog wrote:
| Peddling conspiracy theories on the internet to gullible idiots
| is very profitable.
| prvc wrote:
| My heart goes out to all these people who I've never heard of who
| suffered $1B in damage to their reputations.
| paganel wrote:
| Blatantly copying from Twitter [1], but it's what I believe,
| also:
|
| > The largest fine paid by a banking executive responsible for
| the 2008 Financial Crisis was $67.5 million
|
| A few tens of millions would have set straight almost everyone
| involved, the victims getting their money, Jones having to pay
| out of his pocket. But $1 billion means Jones will never be able
| to pay the sum, and, what's more, it will also silence him
| indefinitely. Which will make lots of his supporters think that
| was the intention all along, and in so doing making a mockery out
| of the act of justice.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/WSBChairman/status/1580289631714947072
| greedo wrote:
| Interesting and brave take to defend a real scumbag.
| [deleted]
| dolfine wrote:
| danans wrote:
| > But $1 billion means Jones will never be able to pay the sum,
| and, what's more, it will also silence him indefinitely.
|
| How does it do that?
|
| You don't need billions or even millions to practice your free
| speech rights. Jones still has a website with a huge
| reader/viewership last I checked, which is far more reach than
| he'd have using the last backstop platform of free speech:
| literally speaking standing on a box in the town square.
|
| Many people like him who have been demonetized on mainstream
| platforms because of content policy violations continue to
| operate with the financing of wealthy private donors who share
| their beliefs and agendas.
|
| Furthermore, there are plenty of media companies that would
| probably hire him as a paid commentator or to host an
| entertainment show where he continues to talk about the
| subjects over which he isn't being sued for defamation. They
| would probably pay him well enough to pay these damages for
| years to come and still live a comfortable life.
|
| He can also keep selling his dietary supplements to his
| audience who seem to believe in their efficacy.
|
| He just can't slander the Sandy Hook families anymore without
| fear of financial repercussions.
| pGuitar wrote:
| That's a bit nuts
| chatterhead wrote:
| Yes it is.
|
| Why didn't Wolfgang Halbig get hit with the same?
| permo-w wrote:
| put it this way: I have never in my life heard of this man,
| and I doubt most people have either. Alex Jones has somewhere
| in the region of 100m viewers
| chatterhead wrote:
| Correct. That's the point. If free speech is based on how
| much you make or how many people listen to you then it's
| not free speech it's a system for extortion.
| permo-w wrote:
| courts award damages based on ... damages
| [deleted]
| pGuitar wrote:
| doesn't seem like it
| jimcavel888 wrote:
| tareqak wrote:
| Key moments from Alex Jones defamation trial (5m 17s)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JepMo2y7Zek
| andrewclunn wrote:
| - Make An Example Out Of Him -
|
| Cut the snake off at the head
|
| Though still it writhers hardly dead
|
| Copper coils as the crowd's blood boils
|
| Why have their knees not bent?
|
| ---
|
| Hammers pounding on drum heads
|
| To drown them out: circus and bread
|
| Screens with screaming faces shout
|
| But they haven't made a dent
|
| ---
|
| Banned ideas may yet be spread
|
| Dead comments can still be read
|
| Printed dollars pay penal fines
|
| Why will they not be silent?
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I'm not a fan of the guy, I think he's a two bit boner pill
| salesman, but I find it interesting, this is much higher than
| most SEC, FTC and FCC fines of big multinationals. Even bigger
| ones, like Purdue pharma, paid over 5 billion, but killed and
| addicted hundreds of thousands to a few million people, I'd argue
| that's more than 5x worse than this. Seems the government likes
| to be soft on their buddies and excessively hard on their critics
| and this is no exception to that.
| ncallaway wrote:
| This wasn't an action brought by the government. He wasn't sued
| by the SEC, the FTC, or the FCC. He was sued by the parents
| that he defamed repeatedly over years.
| saltminer wrote:
| As someone who's been closely following the Infowars/Free Speech
| Systems trials (watched all the depos, trial footage, etc.), all
| I can say is that I'm glad these families are finally getting
| justice. Even though I'm sure it'll be tied up in appeals for
| awhile (and reduced on appeal), hopefully it'll prevent future
| harassment campaigns against families when tragedies occur.
|
| And before anyone says "but why wasn't Jones given a trial to
| determine his guilt? The first amendment is under attack!",
| Infowars has repeatedly failed to prepare its employees for
| depositions, refused to respond to discovery requests, and has
| perjured itself numerous times. The default judgements received
| in both this and the Texas cases were well deserved, and anyone
| with a less explosive personality and media presence would have
| been given far fewer chances to comply.
| samstave wrote:
| unknownaccount wrote:
| Did Alex Jones personally harass any families or he being
| punished for what independent actors did?
| joenathanone wrote:
| If you falsely yell 'fire' in an occupied building, you are
| responsible for the resulting damages.
| chris_wot wrote:
| The guy claimed they were all crisis actors.
| [deleted]
| HyperSane wrote:
| They aren't independent actors because they were highly
| impressionable people whose actions were influenced by Jone's
| lies.
| unknownaccount wrote:
| This is what the erosion of personal responsibility and
| accountability looks like. Alex Jones isnt responsible if
| stupid impressionable people watch his show and do stupid
| things. That is absurd and absolutely chilling in regards
| to free speech. Perhaps it even sets a new precedent that
| everyone who posts a comment/video/podcast online is now
| responsible for any illegal actions that any of their
| viewer commit.
| helf wrote:
| Oh here we go... _rolls eyes_
|
| This is not "chilling to free speech".
|
| Spewing hatred and demonstrably false utter bullshit and
| stirring up people knowingly is what he has and continues
| to do. Just like any number of other sociopathic fuckwits
| out there and through the ages.
|
| "Personal responsibility and accountability " is exacty
| what he's being held accountable for because /his/
| actions, /his/ drivel, /his/ psychotic vitriol was
| /knowingly/, /willingly/, and /joyfully/ used to cause
| these problems.
|
| Your logic would dictate that no one is ever at fault for
| causing anything. It's the dipshits who are dumb enough
| to go with them who are at fault.
|
| I mean, step back and listen to yourself for a moment.
|
| Unless you are too far gone you MIGHT recognize the
| absurdity of your views.
|
| I am so fucking tired of human trash like him, Glenn
| Beck, Joe Rogan, Trump, _insert hundreds of other pieces
| of shit_ getting to do literally whatever they want
| because "personal accountability" dictates that what they
| said was just words and free speech and they aren't at
| fault.
|
| Give. Me. A. Fucking. Break.
| unknownaccount wrote:
| Alex Jones wasnt the mastermind who created this
| conspiracy theory. The crisis actors conspiracy theory
| was already popular on the internet a couple days after
| the incident, months to years before Alex Jones covered
| it. There were numerous people speculating at the time
| about some strange discrepencies in the official
| narrative and footage which was able to convince some
| otherwise very reasonable people that there was a
| possibility that it was a hoax. So no, it cant be said
| for certain that he knew it was false. And no, he cant be
| blamed for covering a popular conspiracy theory on his
| show when its well known that he performs a conspiracy
| theory talkshow. I dont understand why this whole
| conspiracy which already existed is being attributed to
| Alex Jones. Perhaps just because he has a popular show?
| This is a clear case of punishing a citizen for having
| the wrong opinion.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's a clear case of punishing a citizen
| for building a hundred million dollar supplement business
| on false allegations about the parents of dead children
| that were made so repeatedly they had to go into hiding,
| and then boycotting the resulting defamation trial. But
| tomato, tomahto.
| abliefern wrote:
| Five minutes of research shows that this isn't true and
| that he knew.
|
| I'm not sure anyone is seriously attributing the
| conspiracy theory to him, they are attributing to him
| that he spread it, publicly attacking the families while
| making money doing so.
| tainfowars0320 wrote:
| ericmay wrote:
| You can see that this isn't the case with a trivial
| example, like if your significant other or a family
| member was killed and I or someone else riled you up and
| enabled you and lied to you and convinced you to go kill
| someone else who didn't kill your family member not only
| would I be held legally/criminally accountable but we
| intuitively understand this as morally wrong as a
| society.
|
| No free speech is harmed here and the First Amendment
| protects you from the _government_ silencing your speech.
| Retric wrote:
| Free speech isn't simply the ability to say anything at
| anytime.
|
| If you lie under oath don't expect a free speech argument
| to work. Similarly if you personally spread damaging
| lies, free speech doesn't help etc etc.
|
| Free speech is most protected when when you take a
| political or religious stance, but the boundaries shrink
| dramatically when you talk about someone specific
| especially if they are simply a member of the general
| public.
| more_corn wrote:
| I think the closing remark at the last trial was: "Speech
| is free, but you have to pay for the lies Mr Jones"
| mostafas wrote:
| Did Hitler personally kill any Jews? Did Putin personally
| kill any Ukrainians?
|
| Sorry to invoke Godwin's law so early.
| unknownaccount wrote:
| No but this still establishes a scary new precedent; that
| any podcaster/videomaker is now legally responsible for any
| illegal actions that their viewers commit on their own
| accord. I can imagine how this will result in people being
| scared to criticize any leader or person in power because
| their comment/video might inspire some crazy person to
| harass them for which they will be found legally
| responsible.
| helf wrote:
| Omg no it doesn't. You know damn well that some random
| streamer or podcaster isn't the same as some of these
| heavy hitters of insanity.
|
| And even ignoring that then YES, YES they should be held
| accountable if they are knowingly spewing falsehoods and
| stirring up people and it causes shit like that.
|
| "Free speech" != "I can be a total fuckwad and say
| whatever so want without any repercussions!"
| [deleted]
| kaba0 wrote:
| It's like there is this wall between US people's
| understanding of free speech and a usual EU residents'.
| The same way Holocaust denial should be punishable, there
| are sane rules that must be abided, otherwise only chaos
| ensues. It won't take you down an Orwellian dystopia any
| time soon, if anything, allowing these criminals selling
| an alternative reality will.
| incrudible wrote:
| Did Alex Jones order anyone to do anything? Honest
| question.
| JellyBeanThief wrote:
| He's not on trial for harassment.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| First amendment isn't under attack. Alex Jones isn't being
| punished by the govt. Ge attacked people, they responded back.
| Defamation law has always existed and people can always sue you
| for libel and slander.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Defamation law has always existed and people can always sue
| you for libel and slander.
|
| But a $965 million dollar judgment for libel or slander would
| have to be justified by comparable damages. That isn't the
| case here.
| polotics wrote:
| Comparable damage? Can you imagine your young daughter one
| days goes to school, never comes back because she bled to
| death in a corridor there, and then for years you get
| attacked by strangers claiming you made it all up and are a
| fake? One thing I really don't understand about the US of A
| is, while it is abominously violent, still, a pork like
| Alex Jones hasn't been physically attacked by anyone. It's
| like there's a complete split in society somehow. In my
| books comparable damage would be everything and all money
| he owns, plus any he will, minus maybe $9 per day. Couldn't
| the jury have voted for such a verdict, why does it have to
| be an amount, why not an "everything"?
| voisin wrote:
| Isn't that what it will amount to? He'll declare
| bankruptcy and everything he's got will go to settling
| some fraction of these lawsuits.
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| Bankruptcy doesn't allow you to hide money. The families
| are added to the list of creditors seeking relief and the
| judge will order them accordingly. The families are
| likely to be the top creditor and will get every penny
| from his estate.
| voisin wrote:
| I'm not suggesting he can hide money. He gives up
| everything he has of bankruptcy date, and then starts
| fresh with a new company and the same followers and same
| advertisers paying him to lead those followers.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Now, suppose that he tries to hide some assets to not pay
| what he owes. In this case he can be on the hook even
| after bankruptcy
| voisin wrote:
| I think his greatest asset is his personality and
| following, and he'll be able to monetize that post-
| bankruptcy. The longer he drags out the court cases, the
| longer he delays that, so hopefully he just gets on with
| him and pays out everything he has.
| jacobolus wrote:
| He was just on his live show telling viewers to send
| money without worry: nothing they sent now would ever go
| to these families because he is declaring bankruptcy.
|
| Whatever bankruptcy judge he ends up before might not be
| amused by such antics.
| tptacek wrote:
| Sure it is. The jury literally just found those damages.
| These aren't punitive damages, they're compensatory.
| Punitive damages are the next phase of the case.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I accept that the jury labeled the amount as compensatory
| damage. But it is obviously the case that that amount of
| damage was not dealt.
|
| Nobody involved had a reputation that was worth $100
| million dollars.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _reputation_
|
| Very probably the matter is not with reputation. What
| seems to be more plausible instead is:
|
| -- the victims having had an angry mob risen against them
| (and of course in the context of having suffered a
| diremost loss);
|
| -- the responsible having financially exploited the
| situation.
| tptacek wrote:
| That's not obvious to me at all. Can a 9-figure media and
| supplements company inflict 25-50 million dollars on an
| individual? Sure they can. Selling the memory of a
| parent's murdered child and defaming them to the point
| where they are followed into different states by lunatics
| threatening their lives seems to easily cross that
| threshold. How disruptive would it be to my life if that
| happened to me? Over how many years? It's a huge amount
| of baseline injury, and then it's multiplied by the
| demonstrable profits earned by Free Speech Systems at
| their expense.
|
| Remember, it's almost a billion dollars because _twenty_
| children were murdered at Sandy Hook, and Jones ' company
| managed to target _all_ of the parents. If only one
| parent had sued, we wouldn 't be batting an eyelash at
| the resulting damages. But Jones built an immensely
| powerful media machine, and then aimed it very carefully
| at his own testicles. Play stupid games, &c &c.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > These aren't punitive damages
|
| I don't see anything indicating this in the linked
| article.
| tptacek wrote:
| Punitive damages in Connecticut civil cases are awarded
| in a later phase of the case. The jury recommends that
| punitive damages be assessed, and the number is worked
| out later. These are compensatory damages.
| MarcoZavala wrote:
| phillipcarter wrote:
| The beauty of the US court system is he has every right to
| challenge it if he feels it's not appropriate.
| bachmeier wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages
| tptacek wrote:
| Again: these aren't punitive damages.
| [deleted]
| warbeforepeace wrote:
| Alex has even recently sued someone for defamation over the
| child porn allegations that were made against him.
| Taniwha wrote:
| People keep saying "it couldn't happen to a nicer person" when
| it literally wouldn't happen to a nicer person
| roganartu wrote:
| "It couldn't have happened to a nicer person" and other
| variations are usually used in a facetious manner. Basically,
| it's sarcasm.
|
| The people using this turn of phrase are effectively saying
| "good, he deserves it for being a bad person".
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes, the comment here is noting the irony of how those
| words apply differently here.
| Taniwha wrote:
| yes, I'm a native english speaker, I was pointing out
| exactly that
| conductr wrote:
| Up next, the financial crimes folks get to tell us all about
| how they hid all their assets so as to limit their actual
| losses
| [deleted]
| jl6 wrote:
| His lies encouraged harassment and death threats.
|
| Did they ever fine / jail those doing the harassment and death
| threats?
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Some comments above claimed that indeed some people faced
| criminal charges for their actions.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's unlikely any of them will be sued civilly, as Jones was,
| because they for the most part weren't running successful
| businesses that profited by deliberately defaming the parents
| of shooting victims.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| jmull wrote:
| > A reasonable sum
|
| Is there any point to reasoning with the people who believe
| Alex Jones' absurd lies about Newtown?
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| > the establishment wants to shut Alex down for speaking the
| truth.
|
| What truth did Jones speak?
| guywithahat wrote:
| The full quote is
|
| > This will only send the signal to millions of people, that
| the establishment wants to shut Alex down for speaking the
| truth.
|
| I don't think OP is arguing Alex Jones spoke any truths per
| say, he's arguing that's how it'll be interpreted by his
| supporters.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Genuinely, do you have an idea how to correct people who
| are convinced that down is up?
| saalweachter wrote:
| So most people I know who do a dramatic 180 hit a
| breaking point.
|
| For all that the inaccurate "boiling a frog" metaphor
| describes how things work fairly well, a lot of people
| hit a wall at some point -- for instance, when "those
| people are bad" becomes "your best friend Joe is bad" --
| and rebound. Once they hit that breaking point, the
| scales have fallen, and they begin re-examining
| everything.
|
| This happens both with people raised in a particular
| worldview, as they gain experiences outside their
| original upbringing, and to people who fall into a cult,
| as the cult gradually ratchets up the craziness.
|
| Of course, not everyone ever finds such a breaking point,
| and trying to push someone to find a lever to crack open
| their worldview antagonistically usually just makes
| someone double down, but a lot of people do find their
| way out.
| myko wrote:
| > That is an unreasonable sum
|
| I disagree. Many of these families need security and barriers
| to prevent Alex Jones' fans from attacking them. A lot of folks
| were impacted by his outrageous claims.
|
| > To put it into perspective, the top 100 biggest company fines
| in the world start at around 1 billion (give or take 200mil).
|
| Fines for companies doing wrong are far too small.
|
| > Alex Jones is NOT the same as some of the biggest companies
| in the world.
|
| InfoWars store alone generated 165 million in 3 years time.
| They pull in a lot of cash. And this penalty should prevent him
| from ever running a media business again, or it has failed.
|
| > the establishment wants to shut Alex down for speaking the
| truth.
|
| ah :(
| rajup wrote:
| The courts determined there was no "truth" whatsoever in what
| Alex jones spouts in his bouts of verbal diarrhea.
| tptacek wrote:
| Jones runs a 9-figure media and supplements business that
| misappropriated and sold the memories of 20 children and the
| reputations of their parents to boost his numbers, and then
| refused to participate in the trial that established his
| culpability. He might be the least sympathetic corporate
| defendant in US history. Even the tobacco CEOs could reason
| that the science was overblown, and that the companies were
| protecting tens of thousands of jobs.
| guywithahat wrote:
| The biggest numbers I've seen were 8 figures (Rolling Stones
| published something suggesting 160 million over 3 years,
| while he was still on YouTube at his peak, which is 53
| million a year), and that was for total revenue which to my
| understanding is debated as being too high. Jones himself is
| probably worth less than 10 million especially considering
| his share of InfoWars is now worthless
| tptacek wrote:
| That seems unlikely, since Jones own bankruptcy filings
| show withdrawals from FSS in the high 8 figures.
| jacques_chester wrote:
| It could've been a ruling for 50c and a pack of chewing gum and
| the same folks would object to it. It's not about the amount.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Analysis of their financials showed that, on good days, Jones'
| show would bring in $800K/day.
|
| Obviously that doesn't mean they have a billion in assets, but
| it does speak to how large their operation is.
| pGuitar wrote:
| Apple and other large businesses get fined nowhere near what
| they have in assets.... no matter how bad their actions are.
| One billion is just crazy in this case...
| Pxtl wrote:
| On the other hand, Gawker network was completely
| obliterated for copyright infringement over the Hulk Hogan
| thing. That seems more disproportionate than this.
| pGuitar wrote:
| Not sure about that case, but yeah copyright laws are
| also nuts.
| balls187 wrote:
| > This will only send the signal to millions of people, that
| the establishment wants to shut Alex down for speaking the
| truth.
|
| FTA:
|
| "Jones ... argued for years that the massacre was a "staged"
| government plot to take guns from Americans and that "no one
| died."...He now acknowledges the attack was "100% real", a
| concession he made in August at a separate defamation trial in
| Texas."
| danans wrote:
| > the establishment wants to shut Alex down for speaking the
| truth.
|
| For speaking the "truth" that Sandy Hook was a false flag
| operation? No, he is being held liable for the effects of his
| broadcasting that lie.
| unknownaccount wrote:
| miked85 wrote:
| He will never possibly be able to pay this amount. It's just
| theater and will never happen.
| toss1 wrote:
| He may not pay that amount, but he will spend the rest of his
| life bankrupt or spending most of his energy avoiding
| judgement, which is a not unreasonable fate for people who make
| a living lying, cheating, and stealing.
| miked85 wrote:
| tptacek wrote:
| The framers of the First Amendment understood and accepted
| the tort of defamation.
| nilespotter wrote:
| Yes indeed. They would have been very pleased with
| someone being charged 1 billion dollars for saying that a
| single event didn't happen. Clearly they would have
| agreed that Jones is liable for the actions of his
| viewers. It's all right there in the founding documents.
| qzw wrote:
| Oh no! _The Founders would be displeased!_ I 'm so tired
| of this kind of argument, as if we should forever
| substitute our own judgement with games of "what would
| The Founders want?" They were men, some were even great
| men, but men nonetheless. Don't worship them like gods.
| If there's something particularly great about the
| founders of the USA, it was that, one, they understood
| human imperfection, including their own, and two, they
| knew human societies change over time and so must their
| laws. They therefore built checks and balances into our
| system of government, and they put in mechanisms for
| change into the Constitution. So let's argue about the
| merits of laws or societal standards, but let's stop
| using the putative preferences of the founders like they
| mean anything. It's no better than when charlatans say
| "God wants this, God wants that" in order to legitimize
| their own opinions and actions.
| tptacek wrote:
| The real issue here is that the founders would simply not
| agree with the parent comment. You don't have to reach
| the issue of whether the argument is persuasive; it's
| simply not accurate.
|
| It's worth digging into this stuff, because it's kind of
| fascinating. It's a reason to go look up what the largest
| fortunes were at the time of the founders, or what the
| major defamation cases where at the turn of the 19th
| century, or how defamation law differs now from the time
| of the framers (hint: it got a lot more favorable to
| defendants).
|
| If you use dumb-seeming arguments as an excuse to speed-
| research weird historical facts, these threads get a lot
| more fun, and also you tend to end up with more
| compelling arguments.
| tptacek wrote:
| Defamation law at the time of the framers was even
| harsher than it is today. Truth wasn't a defense, and
| there was no "actual malice" standard. You were as likely
| to be arrested and imprisoned for these kinds of
| statements as you were to be sued for damages. The
| founders would have been fine with this outcome.
| saalweachter wrote:
| The bigger debate would have been whether the matter
| should be pursued through the courts or if the defamer
| should be challenged to a duel.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Honestly not against restoration of the _code duello_.
| tptacek wrote:
| That's an extremely Jones-adjacent opinion to have.
| lovich wrote:
| Did Alex jones only say that an event didn't happen? Or
| is that perhaps skipping over the numerous other
| defamatory claims he made? Regardless this was a self own
| business jones refusing to defend himself and not
| continue to perjure himself repeatedly. He likely could
| have made all the same claims and walked away with a
| settlement or judgment in the low seven figures if he
| merely stopped lieing when caught and told to stop.
| notacoward wrote:
| The first amendment binds only the government, not private
| torts. It has never applied to libel, slander, fraud, or a
| host of other things either. Bringing it up in this
| context, especially as a one-line throwaway, is an act of
| extreme bad faith. No sane definition of "free speech"
| precludes accountability for one's words or their tangible
| effects.
| epgui wrote:
| Don't attribute to bad faith what is easily explained by
| stupidity! Commenter almost certainly wasn't writing in
| malice.
| notacoward wrote:
| Sorry, can't read minds. What I can read is the many
| other sub-threads where the "first amendment" point had
| already been addressed. Maybe if some new argument had
| been presented it would be easier to consider good faith,
| but not even an old one was. Just a casual dismissal,
| which is almost as bad as someone making meta comments
| more often than substantive ones.
| koshergweilo wrote:
| First amendment has limitations. Saying fire in a movie
| theater, for example. Multiple courts in a number of
| separate jurisdictions have ruled that the first amendment
| does not protect Jones in these cases
| Zigurd wrote:
| That's actually a kind of poor example. The tort of
| defamation is much more clearly outside of constitutional
| protection.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Just so we're on the same page, "fire in a crowded
| theater" was coined as part of the Supreme Court's
| upholding of a conviction for protesting the draft during
| WW1. The decision is no longer really relevant, having
| been replaced in a later case with a revised test that
| requires that the speech in question is intended to, and
| likely to cause, imminent lawless action. Which is for
| the best, because the Schenck decision hails from an era
| of the Supreme Court that was decidedly less tolerant of
| individual speech.
|
| None of that is relevant here, because defamation is an
| established exception to the 1st amendment, totally
| separate from incitement of lawless action.
| 83 wrote:
| The first amendment is not a free pass to say statements
| that are dangerous or harmful to others.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Unless his primary residence is in Florida which the
| homestead act prevents the courts taking. He could then shift
| all his funds to Crypto and use Crypto ATMs that don't
| require KYC to withdraw a few thousand (per wallet) at a
| time.
|
| OJ is a prime example of how a truly wealthy individual can
| prevent the bulk of the wealth being taken from a court
| order.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _primary residence is in Florida which the homestead act
| prevents the courts taking_
|
| Under Florida law. Federal law, _e.g._ Chapter 11
| bankruptcy, overrides it.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Well OJ at least lost the rights to his book and had it
| renamed something like "I did it"
| Zigurd wrote:
| Defense of Alex Jones here, generally in the form of "it was
| just speech, it was just one falsehood, goodbye free speech,
| if I say just one wrong thing..." etc. speaks of a particular
| trait: Context-free pedantry.
|
| These people imagine themselves practicing their context-free
| pedantry in the workplace and saying something like "Go to
| Massachusetts for your abortion" or something analogous
| regarding race, disability, sexual identity, etc. and getting
| crushed for their speech.
|
| It's not the speech. In Alex Jones's case, the speech led
| directly to violence against the families of the dead kids.
| For the people who imagine themselves to be future victims of
| speech restrictions, it's not their speech, either. It's
| their lack of understanding that speech has consequences,
| like an inherent inability to work alongside others who
| cannot then trust them. What woman in Texas, for example, can
| trust a man who believes she has no right to control her own
| body when he could snitch on her?
| [deleted]
| colesantiago wrote:
| jagger27 wrote:
| Is a billion not enough?
| colesantiago wrote:
| Absolutely not, it should be $1BN for every year InforWars
| has been in operation.
| wyager wrote:
| Do you understand that the amount of the damages has zero
| practical bearing past a number much smaller than $1B?
| colesantiago wrote:
| I don't care. The amount of irreversible damage and
| suffering that man has caused with his company and his
| total fake news goes far beyond the Sandy Hook victims.
|
| I only wish more generational bankruptcy for him with
| everything he has caused.
| alexnewman wrote:
| Stupid question, why not 1 trillion? Is it dischargeable in
| bankruptcy? I assume he won't even get close to 1B. Figure it
| gets cut to 500M in appeals, and he doesn't make 100M in his
| lifetime. What happens?
|
| I believe The largest fine paid by a banking executive
| responsible for the 2008 Financial Crisis was $67.5 million
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| > he doesn't make 100M in his lifetime.
|
| Infowars made $165 million in 3 years [1].
|
| 1. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/alex-
| jon...
| alexnewman wrote:
| Revenue or profit? It's unclear. If it's revenue, at 10%
| margin, I'd guess he's close to broke after expenses.
| [deleted]
| mynameishere wrote:
| The more I think about it, the less concerned I am that there's
| one less controlled oppo nutcase out there. His Sandy Hook stuff
| was so stupid and unhelpful that it just had to be an act similar
| to the old Phelps "GOD HATES [insert any group here]" people of
| yesteryear.
|
| The problem of course, is that lies (in the technical sense) are
| pretty common and often much more damaging that this fluff up.
| There's a lot of billions that could change hands if the lawsuits
| all went up at once. But really, they won't all go up at once--it
| will be the political undesirables only.
| Arrath wrote:
| While nothing can bring back their children, siblings, or
| classmates, one hopes (but doesn't expect) that this will help
| consign a particularly vile and repugnant conspiracy theory to
| the dustbin of polite discourse.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Doubt. The people who believe this kind of stuff will just say
| it's the deep state trying to cover up their conspiracy or some
| equally asinine garbage. They have a persecution fetish, and
| any sort of punishment will just cause them to double down.
| wahern wrote:
| Such public accounting does seem to have value in reducing
| the number of people (present and future) not yet committed
| to his cult, but who otherwise might. And while there'll be
| more Alex Jones personalities, for a little while at least
| they'll likely moderate their behavior more than they
| otherwise might.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| "There's none so blind as those that just won't see."
| permo-w wrote:
| odds are Alex Jones will move somewhere with a poor judicial
| relationship with the US and add this to his narrative
| robswc wrote:
| This will certainly not help and has only breathed new life
| into the conspiracy. The (un)fortunate thing about most people
| that are absolutely nuts is that they have nothing to lose.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| At this point, I've come to think that nothing _would_ help
| these people. Nut jobs will see what they want to see. So we
| might as well make pied pipers like Jones face the
| consequences of their actions, like what we saw with today 's
| ruling.
| ifqwz wrote:
| dolfine wrote:
| Pxtl wrote:
| To the free speech purists in this thread, I have a hypothetical
| I'm curious about:
|
| What if it happened to you? Let's imagine that a media source
| with millions of viewers - like a local news channel, for
| example, or a radio show, went live with a story that had
| specific and false allegations that you did something odious.
| Like they said you were a cannibal or a pedophile or something
| like that. And as a result, you were faced with a campaign of
| harassment and threats by fans of this source. If people googled
| your name, "Cannibal" was the top hit.
|
| And they made millions of dollars from these allegations.
|
| What would your recourse be?
| xupybd wrote:
| I consider myself a free speech purist. I also think defamation
| and libel laws are required.
|
| I think this is the system working as it should.
| swordfish69 wrote:
| What if you performed simple public records requests and
| realized that this whole event stinks to high heaven and that
| it was immediately politicized by politicians and billionaire
| media elites to suppress the rights of American citizens?
|
| There always has to be room to question events that dominate
| the news cycle.
| [deleted]
| ncallaway wrote:
| Please be specific what public records requests you've done,
| and how they demonstrated that this whole event stinks to
| high heaven.
|
| What records have you reviewed?
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >What if you performed simple public records requests and
| realized that this whole event stinks to high heaven and that
| it was immediately politicized by politicians and billionaire
| media elites to suppress the rights of American citizens?
|
| Are you claiming to have done so? If that's the case, what
| were the results of your "public records requests"?
|
| What rights have been suppressed? Please do tell.
| [deleted]
| wyager wrote:
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| And yet I'm reasonably confident he'll exercise some legal
| maneuver to avoid paying even 1% of it, and will continue to live
| out the rest of his life in comfort.
| GamerUncle wrote:
| This is more than the amount that people that lied about WDM's in
| the middle East were ever fined with. Consider they killed
| millions. Please know that I am not siding with Jones but this is
| ludicrous.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| If you lie in a way that lets the government ruthlessly murder
| millions you get promotions and a cushy pension.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| This is a fair judgement against Jones. A fair judgement
| against the people who lied about WMD's and killed millions via
| the war in Iraq would be life in prison, for a start.
|
| Just because the criminals at the top get away with war crimes
| doesn't mean the criminals lower on the totem pole shouldn't be
| punished. It's a false equivalence to claim otherwise.
| GamerUncle wrote:
| That is definitively not the definition of a false
| equivalence as I did not claim he should go scott free.
| However I doubt that there is anything fair regarding a 900
| millon dollar punishment on a person that has a net worth
| that is orders of magnitude smaller.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| A lifetime of garnished wages seems like a small price to
| pay for a millionaire who makes a career out of peddling
| hatred that ruins other peoples' lives. And they didn't
| just make up the number out of nowhere; it's based on
| estimated damages that his actions caused. I'm not a lawyer
| so I can't speak to precedent or similar judgements in
| other cases. In any case, he will appeal, so we'll see what
| the final number actually comes out to.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Just the one order of magnitude, really[1] - "The forensic
| economist also estimated Jones' personal net worth between
| $70 million to $140 million."
|
| [1] https://www.insider.com/alex-jones-free-speech-systems-
| infow...
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| In that case, the answer is not to fine Jones less, but to fine
| the WMD liars more.
| permo-w wrote:
| bad thing unpunished, therefore other bad thing not worth
| punishing?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| It does seem based far less on his actions than on their
| personal opinion of him. That ought to make everybody nervous.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| If you follow the trial at all, you'll see that this was not
| just "he said a bad thing one time and people are mad at
| him." He has a strongly demonstrated pattern of lies,
| perjury, obstruction of the legal process, and encouraging
| harassment against the Sandy Hook families. Most of the
| people saying "everyone should be afraid of this" are arguing
| in bad faith.
| entiex wrote:
| but absolutely none of that, save the encouragement of
| harassment, has any bearing on what the victims suffered
| from the behavior the lawsuit is fundamentally about. These
| damages are, supposedly, compensatory, and so the only
| relevant factor is supposed to be what the victims actually
| suffered.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| Forgive me for wondering whether an account created 27
| minutes ago is arguing in good faith on a topic that
| frequently gets brigaded by FUD trolling. An actual
| lawyer will have to weigh in on whether this fits the
| damages awarded in similar cases.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| You mean on the jury's personal opinion of him?
|
| A defendant has a right to trial by jury. The consequence of
| exercising that right is trial by a jury.
|
| In some venues, "unfair" (quotes here because reasonable
| people can dispute how "fair" is to be assessed in a
| circumstance such as this) damages rulings are back-stopped
| by statutory maxima. I don't know Connecticut law, but that
| appears not to be the case here.
| fairity wrote:
| People gawking at the magnitude of the fine are perhaps
| underestimating the scale of profit being generated from the
| enterprise in question. To be clear, I'm not sure one way or the
| other, but I'd keep an open mind to the possibility that it's
| actually possible to collect a large fraction of this penalty.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Can somebody explain the statement from the lawyer, as reported
| by Axios:
|
| > _<<We disagree with the basis of the default, we disagree with
| the court's evidentiary rulings. In more than 200 trials in the
| course of my career I have never seen a trial like this>>, Pattis
| added. <<Today is a very, very dark day for freedom of speech>>_
|
| given that another bullet states
|
| > _claimed the shooting was a "false flag" operation planned by
| the government using "crisis actors" to undermine gun rights_
|
| which gives very little space for interpretation.
| rglover wrote:
| It's a statement of opinion which perfectly fits under the
| guise of free speech.
|
| I can claim that McDonald's hamburgers are made of cat meat to
| lower prices and it's the exact same thing. It's only because
| it's political (and Jones is a perennial example to be paraded
| about as the standard for "evil far-right conservative
| extremist" thought) that it gets contorted into what it has.
|
| This will predictably bite people in the cheeks later when this
| case is used as pretense for going after someone those
| chastising Jones agree with.
| tptacek wrote:
| No. If you built a multimillion-dollar media enterprise and
| used it to state that you had actual knowledge that McDonalds
| used cat meat in their Quarter Pounders, McDonalds would
| likely end up owning your media enterprise, and might also
| erect a PlayPlace(tm) on the ground your house stood on. We
| just saw this happen to Oberlin a few weeks ago: you can do
| tens of millions of dollars of damage by materially
| misstating facts, and "McDonalds Quarter Pounders Meow
| Instead Of Moo" is a statement of fact, not opinion.
|
| (The numbers in the Oberlin case also flatly refute your
| argument as well; there, a conservative-friendly plaintiff
| won a number comparable to what the Sandy Hook parents won
| here. The big distinction is that there were many more Sandy
| Hook parents than there were defamed Oberlin candy store
| owners.)
| rglover wrote:
| Right, but did he make a specific claim that he had
| specific, direct knowledge of Sandy Hook being a hoax
| (e.g., his usual trope of "we've got documents")?
|
| A parent (individual) isn't a corporation with profits to
| be damaged. I don't doubt a claim of emotional distress,
| but it's a stretch to say every single parent's character
| was defamed. As far as I saw from trial clips, one nutjob
| lady claimed Info Wars radicalized her into going after
| parents.
|
| Defamation in that case doesn't make much sense based on
| the stuff I saw presented.
| kaba0 wrote:
| They were harassed by his followers across state lines,
| so yes, even a broke person's life can be made orders of
| magnitude more difficult than it should be under normal
| conditions.
|
| Also, let's not walk this eggshell here of "did he make
| any specific claim", this is the same bullshit that
| defends trump from calling covid hoax and whatnot.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes, that was well established --- as it has to be in any
| defamation case, lest the case be dismissed. Moreover, it
| doesn't much matter, because he deliberately defaulted
| the trial itself, so the only question for the jury was
| damages. If you haven't followed this case at all, it's
| pretty easy to quickly Google the background, and you'll
| immediately fine that "defamation in this case doesn't
| make much sense" is probably not a coherent thing to say
| about the Jones case.
| sgent wrote:
| See Taco Bell suing for defamation about the makeup of their
| taco meat. You might get away with a claim about McDonald's
| burgers that is wrong, it would only be because you were to
| small to notice.
| ep103 wrote:
| It is a statement of my opinion, that rglover is a pedophile,
| that has personally been involved in sodomizing children in
| the greater New York metropolitan area, and does so
| frequently while working on plans to do terrorist activities
| in that city with a shadowy cabal of mostly (insert ethnicity
| here) figures.
|
| Now, my kind viewers on Hacker News, I have to attest that
| these are just my opinions, and as such, I cannot strongly
| recommend that this viewership immediately find out rglover's
| personal information and regularly and constantly forward
| that information to the New York City Metropolitan Police
| Department's phone numbers for anti-terrorism or crime
| prevention (available here: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/bu
| reaus/investigative/investi...).
|
| Thank god, where we live in a type of society where, as
| rglover describes, I am free to make any statements I please,
| in any manner I please, and claim protection under the right
| to free speech, and things like defamation and libel law
| simply do not exist.
| rglover wrote:
| > I am free to make any statements I please, in any manner
| I please, and claim protection under the right to free
| speech
|
| Yes, you are.
|
| > things like defamation and libel law simply do not exist.
|
| I never said they didn't exist.
| acchow wrote:
| > I can claim that McDonald's hamburgers are made of cat meat
| to lower prices
|
| Without evidence? Wouldn't this just be slander?
| tedunangst wrote:
| His lawyer is not very good.
| glonq wrote:
| I don't want to live in a world where Alex Jones has access to a
| billion dollars.
|
| But TBH I don't really want to live in a world when Alex Jones
| exists at all.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _exists_
|
| The issue is not with exceptions (every village is entitled to
| having a fool), but with the trend of large amounts of people
| giving them credit.
|
| Especially in a wave of mounting relativism trying to "soften
| the distance between lunacy and truth".
| glonq wrote:
| > the trend of large amounts of people giving them credit
|
| Agreed. Screw that neanderthal dummy Joe Rogan for giving
| credibility to Alex Jones.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| incahoots wrote:
| I'm curious if this decision will play any part in the current
| defamation suit between News Corp and Dominion.
| mav88 wrote:
| p1necone wrote:
| ivraatiems wrote:
| This is great news, but we should temper our expectations: It's
| likely that Jones will appeal and keep this tied up for years
| before he has to pay anything. Even if he is eventually obligated
| to pay some amount, it is unlikely to be what the jury just
| decided. And even if it is what the jury just decided, Jones'
| company is already "bankrupt" (yet still on the air) and he will
| almost certainly avoid liability through all the useful tools and
| entities available to a person who has hundreds of millions of
| dollars in the first place. And through all this, he will
| probably remain on the air spouting his lies - as he is literally
| right now as I write this post.
|
| In sum, it's good to know that we're trying to hold him to
| account, but it seems unlikely that this stops him in any
| material way from just continuing on the way he has been.
|
| Our system is not setup for situations that involve faith as bad
| as Jones', on the part of people who have not themselves
| committed an obvious violent crime.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| The key here will be if they can attach any of his assets
| despite his pleas of poverty and filing for bankruptcy. The
| victims may end up owning the studio he is currently
| broadcasting from (and his cars, home and anything else of
| value).
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > And even if it is what the jury just decided, Jones' company
| is already "bankrupt" (yet still on the air)
|
| I was under the impression the courts were "unwinding" (perhaps
| not the correct technical term) some of his bankruptcy efforts
| for precisely this - being illusory efforts to avoid
| consequences, rather than functional lack of solvency.
| glenstein wrote:
| I am under the same impression. Everything I've heard re: the
| bankruptcy filings suggests that none of his machinations
| will protect his assets from the courts.
| thechao wrote:
| I live in Texas, but I'm (distantly) familiar with
| California: when the defendant loses & is a complete turd,
| judges have (delightedly) "peered through the corporate
| veil".
| tptacek wrote:
| Remarkably, I think this is all economic damages --- they
| haven't reached the punitive damages phase. Furthermore,
| Connecticut doesn't have caps on compensatory damage for
| emotional distress.
|
| So this isn't quite like the Texas situation, where Jones
| attorneys successfully convinced the jury to award relatively
| small compensatory damages and large punitive damages --- those
| Texas punitive damages will get knocked way back, because there
| are local and federal caps on the ratio of punitive to
| compensatory damages.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I know your latter statement is true. Not sure about the
| former but IANAL. I do know attorney's fees are coming next.
|
| Still, I think the odds he actually is forced to pay almost
| any of this are vanishingly small.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm less certain. It looks like this mostly hinges on the
| bankruptcy filings, which weren't going great for Jones
| (as, of course, they should not, as they seem pretty
| bogus).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Bankruptcy notwithstanding, he almost certainly does not
| have $1B. He's a celebrity figure of sorts, but pretty
| fringe. It's a symbolic victory. He'll have to liquidate
| the bulk of whatever assets he may have, and the
| plaintiffs will get a few dollars when it's all said and
| done.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, it seems like he has personal assets in the high tens
| of millions of dollars, and that Free Speech Systems was
| probably worth into the 9 figures. If the verdict stands,
| all of that will get wiped out, and the question
| remaining will be whether the damages, which stem from an
| intentional tort, will be dischargeable when Jones is
| _forced_ into bankruptcy non-ironically, rather than
| using it as a ploy.
|
| Still a lot of "if's" here!
| pen2l wrote:
| This always confused me, if someone is wiped out in this
| way how are they able to survive in the aftermath? Isn't
| this effectively sentencing them to homelessness forever,
| or is there a floor value in these wins that's always
| respected which accounts for some minimal cost amount of
| food+rent?
|
| And doesn't the responsibility to pay up remain for money
| made after the bankruptcy event? Or does declaring
| bankruptcy ensure a clean slate such that income from new
| ventures is safe from being confiscated?
| warbeforepeace wrote:
| Ask gawker.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm no expert but I think the general flow is that you
| wipe out all the debtor's assets, and then you arrange
| with the bankruptcy court to garnish their earnings until
| the matter is settled. That's for instance how it worked
| out with OJ.
| Kesseki wrote:
| Yes, there is usually a floor value. Most states
| enumerate some types and amounts of property, and some
| amounts of income, that are exempt from civil judgment
| collection. It's the same thing for bankruptcy: there are
| exemptions that allow you to keep a certain amount.
|
| A bankruptcy discharge does usually ensure a clean slate
| for new ventures. However, some types of debt are
| "nondischargeable" and can survive a bankruptcy. That
| includes "intentional torts" like these instances of
| defamation. So, it's likely that these
| plaintiffs/creditors will be able to go after his new
| ventures.
| [deleted]
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Yeah I think the object here is not to enrich the
| families but to make the costs actually matter instead of
| being a line item on his annual financials.
| tainfowars0320 wrote:
| donatj wrote:
| How does one possibly cause $64 million in straight damages
| per plaintiff? This isn't even the punitive yet.
|
| You could take everything I own and prevent me from ever
| earning another dollar and it wouldn't be $64 million
| dollars.
| tptacek wrote:
| By making millions of dollars by deliberately amplifying
| the pain of a murdered parent, so that they're harassed and
| threatened, face to face, even when they visit states
| across the country from where they live. It's not
| complicated. Jones really did fuck these people's lives up,
| and he did so knowing that their lives had already been
| devastated. It's hard to even think of a way to profit from
| the mass murder of first graders, but Alex Jones literally
| found a way to do it; he might be the only person to have
| done so successfully.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > In sum, it's good to know that we're trying to hold him to
| account, but it seems unlikely that this stops him in any
| material way from just continuing on the way he has been.
|
| It depends on if your goal in a trial about the horrible
| damages done to the parents of murdered children was only to
| compensate in some way those suffering parents for that
| defamation. If your goal was to attack Alex Jones because you
| don't like him (you're an anti-fan) and you don't like people
| who like him, then this will be disappointing. Really anything
| other than summary execution would be disappointing.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The only organ of society that really could hold him to account
| (and historically _has_ held those such as him to account)
| would be broadcasters. Jones airs on the Genesis Communications
| Network, which could choose to cease to carry his content if it
| wanted. He 'd drop into the obscurity of online self-publishing
| almost immediately.
|
| (This thought feels familiar).
| robotresearcher wrote:
| BBC reports that Jones asked live on air for financial
| donations during the proceedings. He will be bringing money in
| over this long before paying any out. He's proved himself to be
| utterly shameless.
| zackees wrote:
| No this is not good news. Say the wrong words and get
| financially destroyed for ever is a feature of failed
| societies: dictatorships, and totalitarian counties.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Alex got financially destroyed because he blatantly and
| repeatedly failed to comply with court orders. Simple orders
| like "show us your financials".
|
| He was defaulted because he and his lawyers chose not to
| participate in the civil legal process.
|
| As for "wrong words" if you watched, it was not just a few
| "wrong words" it was YEARS of vilifying the sandyhook
| parents. It was hiring "reporters" to go harass them. It was
| sending someone on a mission to disrupt a fun run.
|
| And further, because it brought in customers, he ignored
| anything that countered the narrative of "sandyhook was fake"
| Even as recently as last week he was calling sandyhook
| staged.
|
| He then went on to lie, repeatedly, in court and deposition
| (which was shown multiple times).
|
| But finally, free speech does not mean "I can say whatever I
| want whenever I want". Libel and slander have been a part of
| the civil code since literally the foundation of the country.
| Lie, knowingly, in a way that harms people, and you'll pay a
| price. It was WELL demonstrated that Jones and his crew knew
| they were lying but continued anyways.
| tainfowars0320 wrote:
| Pxtl wrote:
| Name a democratic country that does not have laws or torts
| against perjury and defamation.
|
| "Free speech" has _never_ been limitless. Fraud, libel,
| filing a false report, uttering threats, copyright
| infringement -- all grounds for a lawsuit if not a prison
| term in any respectable country.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| The "say words, get X punishment" complaint is one of the
| purest forms of bad-faith hypocrisy I've seen become popular,
| across my whole life. The simple reason it is hypocritical is
| that the complaint is predicated at once on the two mutually
| exclusive ideas that words are critically important (since
| "X" is frequently some kind of censorship, or at least a
| discouragement) and also that words are meaningless and have
| no real effects.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Imagine your child being murdered, and then a guy comes along
| and starts making a profit on the idea that you are a crisis
| actor and your child never existed, and he doesn't stop even
| when the crazy people who listen to him start to stalk you.
|
| Most people would probably say that this sort of behavior
| should not be only not be tolerated by a civil society, but
| that there should be penalties for it. You, on the other
| hand, have decided that being sued for libel is a
| totalitarian death wish.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Say the wrong words and get financially destroyed for
| ever...
|
| This is an incredibly disingenuous take on Jones' actions
| here.
|
| Edit: For additional context, OP has a history of direct ties
| to conspiracy theories, Project Veritas, etc.. See: their
| profile.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Perhaps it's cynical rather than disingenuous. ~30% of
| people derive more satisfaction from seeing someone worse
| off than they do from mutual benefit - not even a zero-sum
| mindset, but a negative-sum one because such people are
| willing to incur a loss as long as it correlates with
| someone else experiencing a greater loss.
|
| Put this depressing fact together with a highly networked
| communications infrastructure, and you can see there's a
| big economic incentive to talk shit about others. The US
| has an entire media sector built around the opinion
| columnists and radio/TV hosts whose whole brand is
| aggressive belittlement of others, or bullying as
| entertainment.
| o_1 wrote:
| This isn't twitter singling out a user for their
| opinions/posts isn't the discourse nature of HN. Please
| keep this type of behavior away from here.
| jjulius wrote:
| In the context of the user making a very inaccurate
| comment about the free speech rights of someone running
| one of the largest conspiracy theory websites, it is
| worth highlighting their own strong connections to an
| organization very similar in intent/spirit to InfoWars. I
| provided no direct link to any personal accounts, did not
| doxx OP, and will defer to dang on this one.
| cycomanic wrote:
| The irony is that the user would likely complain loudly
| about you posting this and ask moderators to remove the
| post. That's how far their defence of free speech goes.
| ferrumfist wrote:
| > Say the wrong words and get financially destroyed
|
| I would argue that a failed society is one that protects an
| individual at the cost of the group. You only see one
| individual held accountable for his words and actions, but
| you don't make any attempt to recognize the families and how
| their lives have been affected by Alex Jones' negligent and
| irresponsible words.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Where are we going with this line of thought Protecting
| minorities within a larger group of people is the ideal
| state according to thought leaders. In your world kicking
| out a black man of his home because property values are
| lowering for everyone else is acceptable. Sometimes the
| needs of the one outweigh the many
| flenserboy wrote:
| Sometimes? _Often_. The individual must be protected from
| the many, and this is why so many are working to get rid
| of protections for individuals of all sorts -- the many
| like to get together to prey on individuals or on a few
| standing alone.
| lovich wrote:
| Your speech has power. That's why we carve out free speech
| protections from the government so you always have some
| measure of power against it. That power also means it can be
| used to damage others.
|
| Being made to pay for damages you caused via speech is not
| censorship in the same way that being made to pay for damages
| you caused via fire is not censorship.
|
| If you want to argue that it doesn't have the power to
| damage, then who cares if it is censored. If you want to
| argue that you should be allowed to damage others with
| impunity and no consequences you'll find most of humanity
| turning against you.
| cbtacy wrote:
| Thank you.
| NickC25 wrote:
| This isn't "saying the wrong words". This is a man who
| profited to the tune of (according to his financial audit)
| $818k PER DAY over the course of a decade by spreading lies
| about parents who had the misfortune of having their
| elementary-school-aged kids shot up by a highly disturbed
| individual.
| dragontamer wrote:
| You couldn't lie in the 1970s or 1980s. If you did, you would
| be sued for libel or slander (depending on how exactly you
| lied).
|
| In the 90s, 00s, and 10s, we somehow forgot about libel /
| slander laws. I'm happy to see that something as egregious as
| Alex's Jones's lies here are finally getting punished, but
| I'd like to see more protection from libel/slander in modern
| 2020s era America.
|
| ------
|
| Lies, traditionally speaking, have NEVER been covered by the
| 1st Amendment. I dunno why we stopped punishing them as a
| society. But its a good thing that we're remembering about
| them today.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The reason why libel and slander laws worked was in part
| due to broadcasters having contributory liability that
| would hold them liable for broadcasting someone else's
| libel or printing someone else's slander. This long-
| standing principle - that the law does not chase pointers -
| is something the Internet was exempted from. CDA 230
| created a new category of entity that is neither speaker
| nor publisher and thus exempted from defamation
| liability[0].
|
| Also, the law itself is actually quite weak for very
| obvious 1st Amendment reasons. It has built-in exceptions
| designed to keep it from becoming a censorship tool.
| However, the context in which that law exists has made the
| exceptions wide enough to drive trucks through.
|
| You see, CDA 230 alone would not have dynamited the
| foundations of libel or slander law. Back then, the
| entities shielded by these safe harbors were supposed to
| just be web hosting providers. But technology moves on, and
| now we have Facebook and Twitter, which act almost
| identically to broadcasters except without the liability.
| And since they've pushed everyone to make everything
| public, that makes everyone a _public figure_ [1].
|
| If you are a public figure, it is harder to be defamed.
| This should be obvious, if I say Donald Trump has a
| narcissism problem or just mis-state the size of his wealth
| I should not have to defend a multi-million dollar lawsuit
| from him[2]. However, if I, say, get defamed by someone and
| respond to them on Twitter, that makes me a public figure
| now - which means the bar is also raised for me as a
| plaintiff. This is how Elon Musk got away with calling one
| of the Thai cave rescue divers a pedophile, for example.
|
| [0] DMCA 512 does the same with contributory copyright
| liability, though with the extra step of having to give
| anyone with a registered copyright total censorship powers
| over your platform in order to get the liability exception.
|
| [1] Technically this is a "limited-purpose public figure",
| which basically means "you aren't a public figure, but you
| stuck your nose in the debate, so for this particular time
| we're going to act as if you were one".
|
| [2] Not like it stopped him - the US court system has very
| few ways to stop a baseless suit before it is filed.
| akerl_ wrote:
| At risk of being pedantic, the bar for defamation is
| considerably higher than "lying". Very relevantly for cases
| like this, the plaintiffs were required to show that the
| false statements caused them harm, where the easiest kind
| of harm is financial harm (like losing your job because of
| the lie).
|
| Notably, I can put up a billboard in my town that says "All
| of dragontamer's code is buggy and it makes your computer
| smell bad", and we'd be a long way off from you
| successfully suing me for defamation.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > the plaintiffs were required to show that the false
| statements caused them harm
|
| IIRC, only for public figures.
|
| The bar is far lower for private figures btw. A lot of
| libel/slander that would pass for public figures (ie:
| Politicians) are absolutely illegal and would be charged
| if levied against private figures instead (such as me, or
| the Sandy Hook victims)
|
| > Notably, I can put up a billboard in my town that says
| "All of dragontamer's code is buggy and it makes your
| computer smell bad", and we'd be a long way off from you
| successfully suing me for defamation.
|
| Hmm... I think the bigger issue here is whether the suit
| would be enough reputational damage to even get to
| damages. IIRC, there's minimum amounts of damage done
| before any suit is even considered (me lawyering up would
| cost more than the reputational damage in that case, so
| it just wouldn't be worth it).
|
| The bar is set at a certain level of damages that I
| expect to get awarded (and courts also reject any case
| where the damages are too low). This is more due to
| pragmatism / the innate inefficiencies of court cases
| that make it less likely for all cases to be
| considered... rather than what is strictly legal or
| illegal.
|
| IE: Even if we were to make it easier to sue for smaller
| amounts of reputational damage, no one would do it
| because of the high costs of lawyers in general (and high
| costs of a full court case).
| akerl_ wrote:
| Harm is required in all defamation. Public figures
| additionally must prove "actual malice" on the part of
| the defendant, which is a term of art distinct from the
| common usage of "malice"
| ncallaway wrote:
| > Harm is required in all defamation.
|
| Harm is required in _most_ defamation. Some claims are
| considered "defamation per se", in which they are
| considered automatically harmful.
|
| - Indications that a person was involved in criminal
|
| - Indications that a person had a "loathsome," contagious
| or infectious
|
| - Indications that a person was unchaste or engaged in
| sexual misconduct
|
| - Indications that a person was involved in behavior
| incompatible with the proper conduct of his business,
| trade or profession
|
| https://www.findlaw.com/injury/torts-and-personal-
| injuries/w...
| tptacek wrote:
| Per se defamation establishes that harm has occurred
| whether or not it is specifically proved. I was going to
| well-actually the same comment you did, and instead bided
| my time to well-actually the predictable response.
|
| At any rate: per se defamation isn't at play in this
| case.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Much appreciated. I should have spelled this out more
| directly in my original comment, but this is what I meant
| about some kinds of harm being more obvious. Defamation
| per se exists largely to handle cases where harm occurred
| but it's tough to point to a specific instance or assign
| it an easy dollar figure.
| ggm wrote:
| But it would naturally lead to lawyers letters and
| probably your apology and a costs settlement on the steps
| of the courthouse. The settlement might be zero sum, but
| you would expect a competent lawyer to advise you to back
| down gracefully all things being equal, assuming you
| lacked any evidence for a truth defence.
|
| Oftentimes, the outcome isn't about winning in court.
| It's about the restitution of the potential harm.
| akerl_ wrote:
| No it wouldn't. That's what I'm saying.
| ggm wrote:
| It's not what you said. You said _successfully_ suing.
| Most suits don 't go to a win in court, they terminate
| before that, and terminate in lawyers letters before
| paperwork hits a court.
|
| I am continuing to assert you're just wrong. I'm not a
| lawyer btw.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Anyone can sue anyone at any time. I can sue you claiming
| that this comment you made is defamatory towards me.
|
| I'm saying that the suit wouldn't end with a settlement
| or an apology or me doing anything; it would be thrown
| out for not meeting the standard for defamation. Tort is
| relatively boring, IMO, but the standards for various
| suits are well defined and publicly documented.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's honestly pretty hard to work out what you're trying
| to assert here. The parent commenter is trying,
| reasonably, to establish the distinction between "lying"
| and "defamation". It seems like you're saying "being sued
| is so expensive the distinction doesn't matter". Ok,
| sure? That doesn't have anything to do with what they're
| saying, and, in the context of the grandparent comment
| --- about libel laws being tightened up --- isn't
| responsive there either.
|
| (A distinctive feature of modern libel law is SLAPP,
| which permits fee recovery for defamation suits that
| aren't well-founded, but that works against the I
| argument I think but am not sure you are trying to make.)
| pen2l wrote:
| (Pedantic nitpicking) I think you mean _anti_ -SLAPP
| laws.
| jfengel wrote:
| Lies are covered by the first amendment. There is a rather
| narrow exception for lies that can be proven to have harmed
| somebody, and you can prove that they knew that they were
| acting negligently (i.e. knew that it would case harm and
| knew that it was false). Those are very high bars to meet.
|
| Beyond that, you can lie your head off. Jones has been
| lying for decades. This is the first time that it was so
| egregious that somebody managed to drag it across the
| finish line for a civil judgment.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > acting negligently
|
| > knew that it was false
|
| Wrong. The bar for negligence is "should have performed
| X, but failed to do so".
|
| Ex: A toddler dying by falling off a deck is negligence.
| The homeowner "should have repaired the deck", but failed
| to do so. (This bar would lead to negligent homicide or
| manslaughter, depending on jurisdiction).
|
| Similarly, a journalist "should have done basic
| research", but failed to do so, is negligence. Its a much
| easier bar than "malice" (ie: knew it was false, but lied
| anyway).
| tptacek wrote:
| The standard relevant in most defamation cases is
| recklessness, not negligence.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| Hm, I'm not sure if that's true or not, but I think a
| journalist publishing false news stories would be
| recklessness anyway, not negligence.
| tptacek wrote:
| Negligence is "shoulda known better". Recklessness is
| "did know better". It's significantly harder to prove
| recklessness.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, do I can't say with much confidence
| what most "defamation cases" are.
|
| But LII at least suggests that the law as written, is
| about negligence:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation
|
| EDIT: According to LII on libel:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/libel, there seems to be
| different awards for negligence, recklessness, and
| malice. Negligence is capped at actual injury, while
| recklessness and above can have punitive damages.
|
| EDIT: Alex Jones's $965M penalty here is likely punitive?
| (I don't know for sure), which suggests that it was at
| least of the reckless level and proven so in court?
| tptacek wrote:
| (1) No, again, the damages announced today are
| compensatory, not punitive.
|
| (2) If we're talking about the "actual malice" standard,
| then the standard is recklessness, not negligence.
|
| (3) None of that matters here, because Jones lost the
| trial by default (the evidence would have clearly shown
| Jones to have met the actual malice standard, but it's a
| moot point).
| dragontamer wrote:
| Thanks for your clarifications.
|
| > (2) If we're talking about the "actual malice"
| standard, then the standard is recklessness, not
| negligence.
|
| My understanding is that "actual malice" only applies to
| public figures. Not private figures?
|
| EDIT: I should note that I'm working off of roughly high-
| school journalism + high school law levels of analysis
| here. I recognize I'm no expert in this subject, but we
| were forced to study this topic in my Journalism class
| before we were allowed to publish the school newspaper. I
| can believe it if my teacher was being extra-conservative
| with regards to the subjects we were allowed to cover.
| tptacek wrote:
| Jones lawyers attempted to claim that the Sandy Hook
| parents were in fact public figures (again, this is all
| mooted by Jones eventual default of the defamation cases
| themselves; the conduct standards we're talking about
| apply pretty much entirely to the question of whether
| you're culpable in the first place, not what the damages
| are.)
| dragontamer wrote:
| Gotcha.
|
| I haven't followed the full details of this case
| specifically. And it seems like there's multiple
| different cases of defamation vs Alex Jones for Sandy
| Hook... and my own memories could be getting mixed up
| between them.
|
| Good to discuss these various details in any case.
| Reckless vs negligence (and other such details) are very
| important to understand the case.
| kirbys-memeteam wrote:
| dekhn wrote:
| The only thing worse than Godwin's Law on the internet is
| discussions of the first amendment. I've seen the exact
| same arguments and misunderstandings repeatedly.
|
| It's a highly subtle right that does not mean what most
| people think it means. Trying to apply it in this case
| won't bring any value to your argument.
| tptacek wrote:
| "Lies are covered by the First Amendment" is not good
| legal analysis. Material misstatements of fact that cause
| damages are all actionable, regardless of how egregious
| they are. Statements of opinion, or unintentional
| misstatements of fact regarding public figures, or
| misstatements of fact that cause no provable damages are
| "protected", in the same sense all speech is protected.
| alexb_ wrote:
| I normally would agree with you - I'm very pro free speech -
| but what Alex Jones did was not just "the wrong words", it
| was blatant slander that permanently ruined the lives of
| these people. I understand why you're concerned, but we've
| had slander laws forever, and this is exactly what it's used
| for.
| fsckboy wrote:
| jjulius wrote:
| >whose life has been ruined permanently, and how?
| genuinely curious.
|
| Imagine losing your child in a mass shooting, and then
| having someone get up on their soapbox in front of a
| massive audience and, repeatedly, drum up outrage from
| their audience towards you. Why? Because they say that no
| kids were killed in that mass shooting. That it was
| bogus. Your child never existed, and you are a liar and a
| crisis actor.
|
| The audience gets angry, hits you up on social media.
| Googles you, starts calling you. Some people start
| showing up at your house, harassing you at your place of
| work. You want it to stop, but this dude on his soapbox
| just keeps going, getting himself angrier about it, and
| his audience angrier. They keep calling. They keep
| hounding you in public. You change jobs, but they find
| you. You move, but they find you.
|
| You lost your child, but you _always_ - year after
| agonizing year - have people coming up to you and telling
| you that that 's not true and that you're a horrible
| person. Grief is a hell of a thing to deal with, but
| society won't even let you properly fucking process your
| loss.
|
| _That_ is how their lives have been ruined.
| NickC25 wrote:
| >whose life has been ruined permanently, and how?
| genuinely curious.
|
| I hope you're trolling.
|
| You want to know whose life has been ruined? The 26
| elementary school kids whose heads were blown off by a
| deranged asshole.
|
| You want to know whose life has been ruined? The parents
| who had to move 5-6 times because Jone's deranged
| followers kept stalking them and actively engaging in
| some of the most inhumane, heartless and disgusting
| behavior I've ever seen from one human to another. I'm a
| native of Fairfield County and have seen some of these
| assholes firsthand, and it is truly disturbing.
|
| You know whose life wasn't ruined (until now)? The guy
| who went around harassing the grieving parents and
| inspiring a legion of paranoid internet tough-guys to do
| the same, and profiting over $815k a day for over a
| decade by doing so.
| brigandish wrote:
| $815k _a day_? Wow. I would've never thought that
| Infowars could make so much money. I've seen some others
| in the thread mention Jones' millions, are his financials
| available? I thought he'd lied and obfuscated them in
| order to go bankrupt.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| The families are being stalked, harassed, and threatened
| with violence by Infowars viewers who think the victim's
| families are crisis actors that faked their children's
| deaths, and that will likely continue forever. It's not
| people like you, it's the psychos that follow Alex Jones.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > but what Alex Jones did was not just "the wrong words",
| it was blatant slander that permanently ruined the lives of
| these people.
|
| How did it do that?
| jjulius wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33183758
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| By this standard, a really large number of people have
| had their lives "permanently ruined" by all kinds of
| different things.
| jjulius wrote:
| ... and?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| And that is in fact not the case.
| jjulius wrote:
| What's your point here?
| kirbys-memeteam wrote:
| bradford wrote:
| Might I recommend the book "Sandy Hook: An American
| Tragedy and the Battle for Truth" by Elizabeth
| Williamson.
|
| It goes into great detail the impact that Jones' slander
| had on the Sandy Hook families.
| incahoots wrote:
| from what I recall he doxxed a few of the families and
| invoked a call to arms to his listeners to harass, stalk,
| and threaten said families.
|
| It's not as if he drove by the homes of these people and
| yelled expletives.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Most developers have signed NDAs at some point. The idea of
| speech being without potential consequence isn't a new one.
| rocky_raccoon wrote:
| Yes, in a world of hyperbole you may be correct. In this
| case, you're taking a very nuanced situation to an extreme
| and throwing out ALL of the important details in the process.
| I trust you are an intelligent person and you're able to see
| this case for what it is, not for what potential "GOTCHA"
| counter arguments you can filter through it.
| peter422 wrote:
| What society has ever had unfettered right to free speech
| without any consequences for what you say?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It is _incredibly_ hard in the US legal system to make a
| defamation claim stick. Relative to other nations (in
| particular the UK, which the US shaped some of its law in
| direct reaction to around 1776), there are several defenses
| to defamation.
|
| The fact that in spite of all those assume-no-malice
| protections for a defendant this lawsuit _still_ found him
| guilty says a lot about this case specifically, and very
| little about the risks of merely "saying the wrong thing"
| (at least under a US legal framework).
| bdcravens wrote:
| It's so much easier in the UK they literally have a term
| for it: "libel tourism"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism
| coyotespike wrote:
| Okay bud.
|
| The common law has been developing for hundreds of years. It
| is an extraordinary institution and an important part of
| Western traditions.
|
| At its best, the common law has allowed a finely balanced
| rule to develop - not in a vacuum, but incrementally and
| iteratively proven in thousands of real-world cases.
|
| Some of the best minds of our civilizations have tussled over
| these guidelines, and the more lawsuits that have occurred,
| the better-developed that area of law, in general.
|
| The United States' approach to the common law of libel and
| defamation has been strongly shaped by the First Amendment -
| and that Amendment was not nearly as strong a century ago,
| remember. It has been accorded more respect and power over
| time, and that is a wonderful thing.
|
| All of this to say: you're ignoring the entire edifice of law
| concerning free speech, libel, and defamation. The balance of
| free speech vs libel and defamation is a defining feature of
| the success of our society, not its failure.
| philistine wrote:
| I much prefer the civil code.
| polotics wrote:
| The difference between your theory ("say the wrong words")
| and practice (weaponizing the Sandy Hook massacre to
| industrially harness victim-blaming for maximum profit) is
| why having a fair trial by jury protects us from dictatorship
| and totalitarianism. You may have a point about failed
| societies, that ship has sailed.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Alex Jones is being sued in civil court which means this is
| an entirely private affair, and he is being judged by a jury.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| > No this is not good news. Say the wrong words and get
| financially destroyed for ever is a feature of failed
| societies: dictatorships, and totalitarian counties.
|
| Oh please, Jones is no way a victim. Your idea of a
| successful society is one that richly rewards wilful
| dishonesty - not the kind intended to amuse or entertain,
| like fiction or the tall tales shared by Art Bell, but by
| deliberately ruining other people's lives.
| mejari wrote:
| Calling what Jones did "say the wrong words" is not anywhere
| close to reality.
| samstave wrote:
| aschearer wrote:
| tptacek wrote:
| (a) Stuff like this is supremely unhelpful and corrosive to the
| thread.
|
| (b) It's obviously not the case that Jones is getting a
| sympathetic hearing from this thread; instead, you're noticing
| mostly the randos posting pro-Jones stuff that lives briefly
| before being flagged to the bottom of the site.
| lovich wrote:
| I think the poster has misidentified most people defending
| Jones in this thread as fans when they are more likely free
| speech absolutists who believe any government sanctioned
| consequence for speech is immoral.
|
| They'd likely defend anyone who received a punishment for
| this type of behavior, Alex Jones just happens to be the man
| of the hour
| p1necone wrote:
| I am yet to see a "free speech absolutist" defend anyone on
| the left (where's the outrage about Republican school
| districts banning books?). It just seems to be a convenient
| excuse for being friendly with fascists.
| 0xbadc0de5 wrote:
| I haven't heard of that - could you describe the books
| being removed from schools? Are they still teaching books
| like 1984, Brave New World and Animal Farm?
| lovich wrote:
| Book bans are on the rise across the US[1], in blue and
| red states. In blue states it tends to be books like to
| "kill a mockingbird", "huckleberry Finn", or other books
| with racially charged language. In red states they say
| they are removing "CRT", and "pornographic" or "sexual
| content", but their definition of sexual and porn
| includes any mention of homosexualities existence and
| their definition of CRT includes any mention of
| minorities having been oppressed at any point in time.
|
| It's kind of a shit show all over
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/30/books/book-ban-us-
| schools...
| lovich wrote:
| You've got a fair point although I will play devils
| advocate at you can find them occasionally in deep
| corners of the internet like /r/libertarianUncensored,
| and even there they aren't the majority
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The poster is wholly correct in observing that Alex Jones has
| a disproportionate number of defenders here. Usually a busy
| thread might collect 2 or 3 flag-dead comments, this one has
| 23.
| tptacek wrote:
| The point is that they're all flagged dead, not that this
| story didn't attract a bunch of new randos to post flagged
| comments. Anybody can make an account here to post nonsense
| with practically no effort at all; it's an open-access
| site.
| adamrezich wrote:
| why would ideological diversity in any community ever surprise
| you?
| norwalkbear wrote:
| He went mainstream on the Joe Rogan show. It was one of the
| most popular Rogan podcasts ever.
| belval wrote:
| So how were the damage calculated? I get that this guy is a
| nutjob but how can saying something is a hoax get you a 1B fine?
| probably_wrong wrote:
| One of the lawyers made in the previous case what I consider an
| interesting argument: Alex Jones claimed under oath that his
| show reaches (off the top of my head) about a hundred million
| people. So the lawyer argued that Alex Jones should pay $1 for
| every person who heard him lie about Sandy Hook.
|
| By this measure, if I intentionally harass someone on Twitter
| I'd have to pay the victim about $50 (on a good day). Since
| Alex Jones has a much larger following, he'd therefore have to
| pay more proportional to that.
|
| I found that line of reasoning... well, reasonable. But then
| again, I'm not impartial here.
| robswc wrote:
| If those were the reasonable standards, every media-company
| would be broke.
|
| I'd argue traditional media reaches many more people and the
| impact of intentional lies is that much greater.
| tootie wrote:
| I don't think you'd find traditional media companies
| routinely getting convicted of defamation this egregious.
| Although, FOX and Newsmax are both facing $1B+ penalties
| over their reporting on Dominion Voting Systems. And
| they're both pretty much dead to rights with Dominion able
| to point very directly to lost revenue as a result of their
| deliberate lies.
|
| Just reporting something incorrectly isn't punishable at
| all. Publishing something poorly sourced isn't punishable.
| Stating a disagreeable opinion isn't punishable. What
| Jones, Fox and Newsmax did was done with active malice.
| robswc wrote:
| Well sure. Technically lying isn't punishable either.
| Only getting caught and only in some circumstances.
|
| I'm probably just a bit bias, as I remember a bit of a
| fiasco with content creators relatively recently with the
| Johnny Depp trial.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/john
| ny-...
|
| here's an excerpt from the editor's note: The first
| published version of this story stated incorrectly that
| Internet influencers Alyte Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy
| had been contacted for comment before publication. In
| fact, only Mazeika was asked, via Instagram. After the
| story was published, The Post continued to seek comment
| from Mazeika via social media and queried ThatUmbrellaGuy
| for the first time.
|
| So did the original author simply lie? Did they forget
| that they never contacted these people? What was the
| punishment? Clicking on her profile it appears she still
| publishes regularly.
|
| I just am not a fan of that "loophole." What's to stop
| FOX news from saying "we just heard all of this bad stuff
| about the voting machines?" What if its just the opinions
| of the hosts that the voting machines are compromised?
|
| Not at all saying this is what happened. Just saying its
| kinda frustrating that _if_ you're smart about it and
| change your actions, you can still have the same effect
| of misleading millions of people but be entirely "OK."
| Cyberdog wrote:
| > If those were the reasonable standards, every media-
| company would be broke.
|
| I think that's a very interesting aspect of this decision.
| Alex Jones is a very easy person for some people to hate,
| but will those same people cheer on Trump suing news
| outlets over the piss dossier and other fabrications, or
| Kyle Rittenhouse suing people who reported he shot three
| unarmed black people? And these were things said by actual
| purported news outlets, not just a guy whose entire schtick
| is clearly intended to be more entertainment than actual
| information.
|
| This decision could usher in a new era of fact-based news
| reporting if it manages to set legal precedent for cases
| from both sides of the political aisle. But I'm not sure if
| I can trust either judges or the media to take the next
| steps required to make that happen.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| No they wouldn't. For most journalists, it's not hard to
| stick to good faith reporting. If you have evidence, you
| can present that. If you don't, you can report on a
| controversy (like when someone is accused of a crime) but
| be clear you're describing it without the ability to
| resolve/shed light on it. And when you do make mistakes,
| you should have a practice of correcting them and
| documenting the fact that you did so, so that your audience
| is about equally likely to encounter the correction as they
| were the mistaken report.
|
| If you do that and have a track record of consistency, then
| your legal liability is pretty minimal.
| robswc wrote:
| >If you don't, you can report on a controversy (like when
| someone is accused of a crime) but be clear you're
| describing it without the ability to resolve/shed light
| on it
|
| Well, I guess there's degrees of lying.
|
| I 100% understand what you're getting at though and I do
| believe _most_ companies and journalists do practice
| this... however I've noticed a trend where you'll have a
| headline or statement that is based on "anonymous
| sources" or "twitter user says X." Intentionally packing
| in as much of the claim as possible while minimizing the
| "source."
|
| One of the most recent examples is from yesterday.
|
| This is the headline VICE News put out yesterday: Elon
| Musk Spoke to Putin Before Tweeting Ukraine Peace Plan:
| Report https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake44z/elon-musk-
| vladimir-pu...
|
| No reasonable person could infer that the entire headline
| is based off of a claim that has been denied by everyone
| involved. Musk can weather "negative" headlines like that
| but I'm more concerned about those that don't have the
| luxury of shrugging that off.
|
| >And when you do make mistakes, you should have a
| practice of correcting them and documenting the fact that
| you did so, so that your audience is about equally likely
| to encounter the correction as they were the mistaken
| report.
|
| I want to believe that... but there's certainly enough
| examples of people having their reputation completely
| trashed by the media with the truth only coming out years
| later. News companies have incentives to get
| views/clicks. I can't imagine "we messed up" is as
| attractive as "this person is a monster."
|
| I 100% agree that they should make best effort to correct
| stories.
| permo-w wrote:
| well then maybe they'd be more careful about what they
| publish. being a big corporation should give you less
| rights than a singular person, not more
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _every media-company would be broke_
|
| Media is constantly being sued for defamation. The
| difficult part is showing they had evidence they were
| lying. That was overwhelming in these cases, which is what
| makes them unique.
| tptacek wrote:
| Morever, any serious media company in the world when
| faced with a suit like this would have lawyered up and
| diligently participated in their defense during the
| trial. Jones did the opposite: he and his counsel
| clownishly attempted to boycott the trial, despite
| repeated and escalating warnings from the judge, and
| ended up losing _by default_ , which is an almost
| unprecedented outcome. Most companies don't respond to
| lawsuits by daring the state to demonstrate the rule of
| law.
| tainfowars0320 wrote:
| robswc wrote:
| Sure. I don't disagree with that at all. I'm just saying
| if OP finds that reasonable he would also find it
| reasonable that basically every media company would go
| out of business.
|
| I'm not at all a fan of lying, not in the least and think
| news companies get off way too easy... but $1 for every
| lie * every person who heard it... that's just a little
| wishful, lol
| nerdponx wrote:
| > If those were the reasonable standards, every media-
| company would be broke.
|
| That doesn't make it any less reasonable of a standard.
| robswc wrote:
| Sure. I just don't think it would work too well in
| practice.
| tootie wrote:
| It's hard to fathom how much damage he did. What he said is
| the absolute pit of human depravity. I know a jury isn't
| really empowered to "send a message" but I hope they did it.
| Alex Jones is absolute stain on humanity and should be
| destroyed (financially and reputationally, not physically). I
| think paying back the families who lost children is the most
| important step, but the entire country deserves punitive
| damages for what he did. I wouldn't want them to get paid
| directly, I'd think they should spend something to deprogram
| all the people who believed his lies.
| [deleted]
| badwolf wrote:
| He caused his fans to harass families of murdered children for
| years, several had to move, some multiple times. All the while
| Alex Jones was raking in millions in cash off it.
| wara23arish wrote:
| shouldn't the harassers be tried ?
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| This is a civil trial, not criminal, so families would have
| to identify harassers first. The FBI or the state can bring
| criminal charges against the harassers but same thing, the
| authorities need to track them down first.
|
| Obviously, it's easier for the authorities to act first,
| then the families can sue.
|
| The whole thing is senseless, the harassers are crazy
| people who believe that it was all "false flags" (for what?
| who knows), when these kids did die. Each harasser that is
| caught need to be shown the photos of these poor dead kids
| and forced to watch them, it will haunt them forever. As
| for Jones, he is a billionaire, this tragedy made is filthy
| rich, that's the only reason he exploited it. He probably
| never believed himself in these things.
| techsupporter wrote:
| Some of them have been (for example:
| https://www.mcall.com/hc-sandy-hook-denier-
| harrassment-0225-...) but the main problem is that it is,
| as most of us posting here know, difficult to track down
| the individuals directly performing the harassment.
|
| Alex Jones is directly inciting people to go harass the
| plaintiffs so he bears liability for his actions.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Alex Jones is directly inciting people to go harass
| the plaintiffs_
|
| Where is this accusation made by the plaintiffs in the
| lawsuit? The only accusation I see is that Jones and his
| associates made defamatory false statements about the
| plaintiffs. As far as I can tell, that was the basis for
| the ruling, not any claims of incitement.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Defamation is inherently inciteful. If I publicly accuse
| you of a horrible crime, and I have a sufficiently broad
| audience, you are going to have to deal with assholes
| coming up to you and saying 'you're the evil person who
| committed a horrible crime!'. At best you get harrassed,
| at worse your safety is at risk from would-be vigilantes,
| revenge-seekers, and people who need a punching bag for
| sadistic or strategic reasons of their own.
|
| Of course, you can argue that there's no direct causal
| relationship because Jones or whoever can say 'I'm not
| saying to do something, but....'. But so what? If an
| outcome is statistically predictable there doesn't have
| to be a direct nexxus, a proximate one is sufficient.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Defamation is inherently inciteful._
|
| That might be your personal opinion, but it's not the
| law. If nutjob A makes a defamatory statement about you,
| but doesn't tell anyone to do anything, and then nutjob B
| harasses you after hearing what nutjob A said, nutjob B
| is the one who is legally responsible for the harassment.
| Nutjob A is responsible for the defamation, but not for
| what other nutjobs might decide to do.
|
| Now if nutjob A explicitly said things along the lines of
| "you should go after this person", instead of just making
| defamatory false factual claims about them, that would be
| different. But I have not seen any claims by the
| plaintiffs that Jones said anything like that. They're
| just saying he made defamatory false statements.
|
| _> If an outcome is statistically predictable there
| doesn 't have to be a direct nexxus, a proximate one is
| sufficient._
|
| This legal theory is a recipe for disaster. There's a
| reason why the law requires direct evidence for things
| like this.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > If nutjob A makes a defamatory statement about you, but
| doesn't tell anyone to do anything, and then nutjob B
| harasses you after hearing what nutjob A said, nutjob B
| is the one who is legally responsible for the harassment.
| Nutjob A is responsible for the defamation, but not for
| what other nutjobs might decide to do.
|
| Courts and jurors are completely fine with finding that
| the behavior of nutjob B (and C and D and E and F) that
| are predictable from the defamation are part of the
| damages associated with the defamation.
|
| So, yes, nutjob A _does_ have legal liability for the
| damages caused by nutjobs B and C and D and E and F that
| are a predictable consequence of the defamation.
|
| The law does not require "direct evidence" of the
| connection to every instance of harassment. It requires
| enough evidence that a jury can decide a "but for"
| causation is more likely than not. Jurors are perfectly
| capable of making deductions and inferences such as
| "person A with a massive platform lied repeatedly for
| years", and then "hundreds of nutjobs harassed plaintiffs
| based on the same lies", connecting those two facts, and
| deciding that it's more likely than not that the nutjobs
| wouldn't have harassed the person if not for person A's
| lies.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Courts and jurors are completely fine with finding
| that the behavior of nutjob B (and C and D and E and F)
| that are predictable from the defamation are part of the
| damages associated with the defamation._
|
| Do you have any actual cases where that was the ruling?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The law leaves room for the jury to form such moral
| determinations on their own, and in this case they have
| done so. I disagree that this is in any way disastrous.
| pdonis wrote:
| Where have they done so in this case? As far as I can
| tell, the plaintiffs didn't even allege damages from
| harassment in this case. They alleged damages from
| emotional distress due to the defamation.
| wara23arish wrote:
| did he really say go harass these people or did he just
| say they're crisis actors and its hoax?
|
| Im genuinely asking because i don't understand how this
| works.
|
| I was under the impression that saying "Trump is a
| murderous liar" is fine, if I say "Go kill trump"etc then
| thats incitement.
|
| Does that make sense?
| ncallaway wrote:
| Incitement is not defamation.
|
| He was not sued for "incitement", he was sued for
| defamation.
|
| To prove defamation, you need to prove that someone lied
| about you, and that those lies caused material harms.
|
| You saying "Trump is a murderous liar" is largely fine
| because:
|
| - A reasonable reader, familiar with the context of the
| place you are writing, would understand that you aren't
| making a factual claim that Trump murdered a person but
| rather you are expression a rhetorical political opinion.
|
| - Trump is a public figure, which means you must meet the
| "actual malice" standard of reckless disregard for the
| truth.
|
| - Trump must have been materially harmed by your
| statements for it to be worth suing you.
|
| If you, on the other hand, falsely and deliberately
| recklessly said: "Trump murdered person X", repeated that
| claim for years, and convinced hundreds thousands of
| people that it was true to the point where Trump had to
| move houses several times due to ongoing death threats,
| then you would probably be liable for defamation.
|
| The _context_ matters. The _breadth of your reach_
| matters. The _actual harms caused_ matter.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _was under the impression that saying "Trump is a
| murderous liar" is fine, if I say "Go kill trump"etc then
| that 's incitement_
|
| If Alex Jones said "go kill these families," he'd likely
| be facing criminal charges. Instead, he made up specific
| claims which he kept repeating even after being shown
| evidence a reasonable person would accept as refutation
| of said claims.
|
| To your analogy: if you said "Trump is a murderous liar
| who buggered my pet rabbit last Tuesday in New York,"
| then were shown evidence Trump was in London and up to no
| buggery, and yet you kept saying it, yes, Trump might
| have a claim against you.
| ferrumfist wrote:
| > "Trump is a murderous liar"
|
| You could argue that using drones to kill people is
| murdering, you can point to times when he lied. It also
| just strikes me as different when saying things about
| someone who is in public office and saying things about
| private citizens who aren't in the spotlight at all.
| lovich wrote:
| He probably could have made such an argument or a similar
| one on his defense but he received a default judgement
| because he continuously refused to show up to court dates
| for his case and perjured himself repeatedly.
|
| If this was a soccer game he basically walked to the edge
| of the field and sat there the whole game and then
| complained that the refs were in a conspiracy against him
| because the opposing team was able to score unopposed.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > did he just say they're crisis actors and its hoax?
|
| This is what he did, and it's defamation. If I say "go
| kill Trump" that might be incitement (although it might
| not be if it's not credible.) If I say "Trump is a
| murderous liar," that's really just a personal
| characterization that can't be disproven - you can find
| things in his past that can be interpreted as murder, and
| things that can be interpreted as lies, whether that
| makes him a "murderous liar" is just banter. If I say
| that Trump molested a child, and I clearly intend for the
| charge to be taken seriously, that's defamation unless I
| can show the kid.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _shouldn't the harassers be tried ?_
|
| Their actions come closer to criminal. Alex Jones isn't
| being criminally investigated; this is all civil.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yes, they should face consequences too, in addition to Mr.
| Jones.
| nilespotter wrote:
| loceng wrote:
| How did he cause his fans to harass families? Did he
| specifically brigade families or tell people to go after
| them?
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Yes, he told his fans to go after the families, explicitly.
| tptacek wrote:
| Remarkably: yes, that seems to have been the case.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| probably because his fans was harassing them even after they
| moved
| serioussecurity wrote:
| Punitive damages were a large fraction of the award.
| tptacek wrote:
| Are you sure about that? The jury _recommended_ punitive
| damages, but as I understand it, in Connecticut the judge
| decides the punitive damage amounts in a later trial phase. I
| think today 's number includes no punitive damages.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| And oh boy has he not been cooperative with the judge so
| far.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| The $965m is entirely economic damages. Punitive damages will
| be added later
| Cyberdog wrote:
| If that's true, I'd love to see how exactly they calculated
| that.
| shagie wrote:
| The breakdown of the damages -
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/us/politics/alex-
| jones-da...
| Cyberdog wrote:
| > Defamation/slander damages, past and future: $60
| million
|
| That's not much of a breakdown, and if anything it seems
| to go against the idea that these dollar amounts aren't
| punitive. Are we supposed to assume that that particular
| plaintiff would have been $60 million richer if Jones
| hadn't had said what he said? Ridiculous.
|
| The emotional distress damages are more subjective, of
| course, but I still don't see the amounts as any less
| punitive at this point.
| shagie wrote:
| Punitive damages are a different (forthcoming) hearing.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/12/us/alex-jones-
| verdic...
|
| > This case presented the greatest financial risk to Mr.
| Jones, because he was found liable of violating Connecticut's
| Unfair Trade Practices Act, by using lies about the shooting
| to sell products on Infowars. There is no cap on punitive
| damages under that law.
|
| > ...
|
| > The next step will be for the judge to consider punitive
| damages, which would be in addition to Wednesday's verdict.
|
| The article How the jury divided $965 million in damages
| among the plaintiffs in the case.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/us/politics/alex-jones-
| da...
|
| This has a breakdown of the compensatory damages and you get
| things like:
|
| > Defamation/slander damages, past and future: $60 million
|
| > Emotional distress damages, past and future: $60 million
|
| > Total damages: $120 million
|
| for _one_ defendant. As there were 14 defendants, this can
| sum up quite quickly.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| In this particular venue, damages were determined by the jury
| (which is not the case in all states).
|
| Relevant to that process, Jones took the stand in his own
| defense, to show remorse and indicate why the jury should find
| for a lower penalty, and... Did the opposite of that. He lost
| his temper and managed to strongly indicate he had learned
| nothing and showed no remorse. Juries tend to take a
| particularly dim view of such behavior (often even dimmer than
| a judge, which is one of the reasons so many states don't
| involve the jury in the process of assigning penalty).
|
| Interestingly enough, the judge _also_ has the authority to
| assign penalty here (Jones ' behavior on the stand and in court
| was egregious) and has not done so yet. Her say comes soon.
| entiex wrote:
| But these aren't puntive damages, they're compensatory
| damages, and plainly excessive ones at that. Alex Jones level
| of remorse has no bearing on the level of damage he caused,
| and so should have no bearing on the amount of compensatory
| damages. To the extent that they did, that's an injustice.
|
| These damages are absolutely insane for emotional distress
| and defamation. The average lifetime earnings of a US citizen
| are $1.7 million. These damages essentially allege that each
| plaintiff suffered emotional distress so severe it was over
| forty times the average person's lifetime earnings. That's
| plainly absurd.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > Alex Jones level of remorse has no bearing on the level
| of damage he caused
|
| That's an excellent legal argument, is the kind of thing
| that could probably win before a judge... And has no
| bearing on what a jury finds. In general, the reasoning of
| a jury is private to the jury. They can award maximum
| damages because they think Jones is ugly (all you have to
| do is get fourteen people to agree that's a fair thing to
| do to the man; hypothetically, the averaging effect over so
| many folks is a back-stop. That back-stop backfires if the
| defendant is particularly loathsome; recall how long it
| took to seat a jury for Martin Shkreli).
|
| This is why damages are, in so many places, not put before
| a jury.
| polotics wrote:
| How do you know that the earnings, and value to society,
| and value to their parents, was going to be...
|
| "average"
|
| you don't know that, and no one will either, because they
| are dead.
|
| My kids ain't average, but then again, they're alive. Are
| yours?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Is it really absurd? Losing a child to murder is already an
| awful outcome that most people never experience. Being
| accused of participating in conspiracy/cover up and told
| your child never existed makes that significantly worse. It
| would be horrible if some random crazy did that, but to
| have it done to you by a well-resourced media organization
| with nationwide reach and millions of devoted fans is the
| stuff of nightmares.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Jones led a years-long defamatory harassment campaign against
| grieving parents for profit. He did not merely say something
| was a hoax, he organized and profited, for years, from his
| slander and harassment against many innocent people.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| One person can do the harm of a thousand people
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It's not just "saying something is a hoax". It's deliberately
| lying, for years, for his own profit, in a way that caused
| significant amounts of damage to the people he was lying about.
| Should that be free from consequences?
|
| No. No, it should not be.
|
| And, since there was profit from the lying, shouldn't the
| damages be _greater_ than the profit from the lies?
|
| Yes. Yes, it should be.
| entiex wrote:
| These are compensatory, not punitive damages. The only
| relevant factor is how the victims were impacted. Jones'
| level of wealth or the profit he gained from lying are both
| improper and injust to consider in the context of
| compensatory damages.
| carabiner wrote:
| Kind of an aside, but this theatric style of writing is
| irritating to read on HN. It also confuses the point here:
| Jones's payment isn't about what "should" be done based on
| personal morals, but what is dictated by law, and that is
| what GP is asking and the question you are ignoring.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, the question of _law_ was already decided.
|
| And, legally, I'm pretty sure (but IANAL) that
| "deliberately lied", "repeatedly", "for profit", and
| "causing harm" were _very_ relevant in deciding how much
| the fine should be.
|
| (Except, as entiex pointed out, that this was only
| compensatory, not punitive. Still... the harm went on and
| on and on for the families, as the lies went on and on and
| on. Is that allowed to be figured into the amount of
| compensatory damage? I think so.)
|
| My overall point: It wasn't just "saying something is a
| hoax". It was much more than that, and therefore the damage
| is much more, so the fine is much more, and justly so.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Law is a heuristic, justice still involves moral reasoning.
| wara23arish wrote:
| are we holding all news to the same account regarding
| deliberate lying for profit?
|
| i hate double standards
| jmull wrote:
| > are we holding all news to the same account regarding
| deliberate lying for profit?
|
| Yes.
|
| You can sue news media companies under the same laws Alex
| Jones was sued. People do it all the time.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| "But whatabout..."
|
| Yes, we should everyone accountable for slander & libel.
| Even journalists.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| > are we holding all news to the same account regarding
| deliberate lying for profit?
|
| >i hate double standards
|
| Aren't we? Please provide examples of actual _defamation_
| (i.e., lies that were known to be lies, that caused damage
| to the subject of those lies) that haven 't been the
| subject of legal proceedings?
|
| Edit: Changed "libel" to "defamation" to be more inclusive
| as to give you more opportunity to provide examples.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| People are constantly suing for defamation [1].
|
| The Jones trials entered the public imagination because
| he's a character and his defense was clownishly incompetent
| in a way that takes no legal training to laugh at.
|
| [1]
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-05/alex-
| jone...
| bsder wrote:
| Sadly, no.
|
| Liars on CNN get fired. Plaigiarists at the New York Times
| get fired.
|
| Let's contrast this to ... say ... Fox "News".
|
| Oh, wait, Fox testified in court that they _weren 't news_.
|
| Sorry, my fault.
| o_1 wrote:
| Is this a cable news doesn't lie pitch? Or is this just
| another 1sideism?
| halfjoking wrote:
| dolfine wrote:
| raydiatian wrote:
| OJones
| sdtriton wrote:
| The people who released opioids upon the American public didn't
| get fines like this. Insane
| tainfowars0320 wrote:
| myko wrote:
| > Insane
|
| It's insane that they didn't.
|
| If you look at the fine, you will see that many families were
| affected. There is nothing unreasonable about that amount of
| money awarded from that perspective.
| sneak wrote:
| Cigarettes kill 7x as many as opiates in the USA every hour,
| day, week, month, and year.
|
| Those companies aren't even fined or put behind a prescription-
| wall.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Adding some numbers: [1] gives ~480k cigarette deaths, [2]
| gives 107k drug deaths with ~80k of those from opiods which
| is an approx 6:1 ratio (close enough!)
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/h
| eal...
|
| [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/20
| 22/...
| [deleted]
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This is uninformed. The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement
| has cost the tobacco industry north of $200 billion. https://
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...
| permo-w wrote:
| that is true but they also aren't allowed to advertise, have
| massive additional taxes placed on them, and huge public
| information campaigns against their use
| o_1 wrote:
| Those people funded super pacs and politicians.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Jones did an impressive job of maximizing his liability
| directly via his words on the stand.
|
| Pharmaceutical companies, in general, know how to listen to
| their lawyers and shut the hell up.
| tootie wrote:
| I'm sure that will get reduced by the judge based on whatever
| state law, but it's a huge signal to Jones that he's an absolute
| monster.
| wyager wrote:
| The decisions of the courts are, by a wide margin, much more
| influenced by one's relationship with the regime than by one's
| relationship with morality.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| Ideally, courts are concerned with legality, not morality.
| tootie wrote:
| You think Joe Biden influenced the jury? I guess it's worse
| position than having a president who was a praiseful guest on
| your show.
| jumelles wrote:
| > This case presented the greatest financial risk to Mr. Jones,
| because he was found liable of violating Connecticut's Unfair
| Trade Practices Act, by using lies about the shooting to sell
| products on Infowars. There is no cap on punitive damages under
| that law.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/12/us/alex-jones-verdic...
| diydsp wrote:
| To him it's an achievement that confirms what he's been
| blathering abt for 20 years. But hopefully it will
| disincentivize others.
| klyrs wrote:
| > it's a huge signal to Jones that he's an absolute monster.
|
| I'd predict that he's going to flaunt the enormity if this
| penalty, and his fans will lap it up.
| Arrath wrote:
| He is, in fact, live-flaunting the verdict on his stream at
| this very moment.
| saltminer wrote:
| Considering how they used a clip from the trial talking about
| Jones' crypto "donations" for an ad to get viewers to send
| more crypto, I'm sure the verdict will be incorporated into
| future ad breaks as well.
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| Why not $965B?
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