Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families • Hacker News Board

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#201

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:02 PM UTC

wara23arish wrote: post #96

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

are we holding all news to the same account regarding deliberate lying for profit? i hate double standards

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...

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#202

Post by lovich » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

wara23arish wrote: post #174

techsupporter wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#203

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #119

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

If I send someone to kill you would you consider me unaccountable?

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#204

Post by coyotespike » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

zackees wrote: post #24

ivraatiems wrote: post #4

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…

Quoted post unavailable.

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.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#205

Post by toomanyrichies » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

GamerUncle wrote: post #46

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.

In that case, the answer is not to fine Jones less, but to fine the WMD liars more.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#206

Post by SoftTalker » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #42

ivraatiems wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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).

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.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#207

Post by samstave » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #4

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#208

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:04 PM UTC

sterlind wrote: post #22

budder wrote: post #16

Quoted post unavailable.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#209

Post by GamerUncle » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

salt-thrower wrote: post #182

GamerUncle wrote: post #46

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.

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.

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.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#210

Post by pessimizer » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

wara23arish wrote: post #174

techsupporter wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

> 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.