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

bbc.co.uk

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

#301

Post by tptacek »

norwalkbear wrote: post #287
lovich wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 s…

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.

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

#302

Post by bdcravens »

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.

Most developers have signed NDAs at some point. The idea of speech being without potential consequence isn't a new one.

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

#303

Post by pdonis »

anigbrowl wrote: post #269
pdonis wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 rea…

> 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.

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

#304

Post by anigbrowl »

carabiner wrote: post #94
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.

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.

Law is a heuristic, justice still involves moral reasoning.

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

#305

Post by tptacek »

qzw wrote: post #298
nilespotter wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

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

#306

Post by lovich »

norwalkbear wrote: post #287
lovich wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 s…

> 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.

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

#307

Post by Jordrok »

norwalkbear wrote: post #287
lovich wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 s…

Jones's lies were unusual and petty. The punishment perfectly fits the crime.

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

#308

Post by o_1 »

jjulius wrote: post #180
zackees wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

>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.

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.

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

#309

Post by thaumasiotes »

alexb_ wrote: post #97
zackees wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

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.

> 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?

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

#310

Post by robswc »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #129
robswc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

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

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